Mapping the Finnish National EHR to the LOINC

The unified content of EHRs promote shared understanding of patient data, information exchange between information systems and health care organizations, data retrieval from EHR and reuse of data for administrative purposes, statistical analysis or clinical research. The purpose of this study was to analyze to what extent Finnish national headings can be coded with the current version LOINC. Ten (37%) of national headings can be mapped to LOINC terms in clinical class. There were LOINC terms in other classes which correspond to headings. Furthermore, inconsistency exists in the names of headings. The need for mapping national headings to all terms in LOINC is needed.