Chemistry International
Vol. 24, No. 6
November 2002
IUPAC Projects
Concepts
and Structure for Requests in Clinical Laboratories
Laboratory
medicine measurements and other examinations are made in the context
of requests from physicians and reports back to the physicians. The
request for measurements and examinations is typically embedded in a
request to the laboratory phrased in the medical language of the requester
and using conceptual dimensions and granularity levels appropriate to
a particular patients case and the discipline of the requester.
Requests usually are formatted within the framework of an electronic
healthcare record system (or as a paper request) and are transmitted
using an electronic health care information system carried via a communication
standard protocol (i.e., HL-7 or Med-RPT). In this project, a solution
for the problem of dealing with the request concept in at least three
contextshealthcare information system, communication standard,
and clinical laboratorywill be sought.
The strong
context dependency of the part of the request containing the medical
information and questions asked is in contrast to the part dealing only
with measurements or other examinations, but the two are clearly related.
The project is set up to define concepts and outline structures for
requests in laboratory medicine, taking into consideration the former
commissions nomenclature and syntactic rules that are meant to
promote and maintain scientifically and conceptually sound ways of expressing
the outcome of measurements and other examinations in laboratory medicine.
For
more information, contact the Task Group Chairman Urban
Forsum <[email protected]>
or visit the Nomenclature, Properties, and Units in Laboratory Medicine
subcommittee Web page at <www.iupac.org/divisions/VII/VII.C.1>.
www.iupac.org/projects/2001/2001-058-1-700.html