Preservation of information in terminology transcoding.

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Medical Terminology
• Information Systems

Background:

• Health information systems require usable and interoperable terminologies.
• Linking interface terminologies (IT) to reference terminologies (RT) is a key challenge.
• Two French hospitals independently developed terminology flows for lab-test prescriptions and results.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the information transmission and mapping accuracy between two distinct hospital terminology systems.
• To assess the effectiveness of a semantic pathway for linking prescription interface terminologies (IT) to reference terminologies (RT).

Main Methods:

• An expert, aided by natural language processing, established a gold standard link between prescription ITs.
• A semantic pathway was defined to map terms through LOINC® and SNOMED®, the respective RTs used by the hospitals.
• The pathway's accuracy in identifying correct links was computed.

Main Results:

• A total of 218 links were identified between the two prescription ITs.
• The semantic pathway correctly identified 96 of these links, achieving 44.0% accuracy.
• The recall of the semantic pathway was lower than anticipated.

Conclusions:

• Using different reference terminologies (RT) in separate hospitals is inefficient for health information exchange.
• The study suggests LOINC® may be a preferable RT for prescriptions due to its potential for better interoperability.
• Improving terminology mapping is essential for enhancing health information system usability and interoperability.