2025-12-04 LabMCoP Meeting Notes

2025-12-04 LabMCoP Meeting Notes

Date

Dec 4, 2025

Attendees

Present

Name

Organization

Present

Name

Organization

X

Nancy Cornish

CDC

X

Manjula Dharmawardhana

CDC

X

Riki Merrick

APHL

X

Christina Gallegos

APHL

X

Amy Liu

Inductive Health / APHL

-

Raj Dash

Duke / CAP

X

John Snyder

Pragmatic Terminologies, LLC

-

Andrea Pitkus

UW

X

Kathy Walsh

Labcorp

 

Rob Hausam

Hausam Consulting

 

Pam Banning

 3M

Discussion topics

Upcoming OOO

 

Follow up items

 

  • Nancy Follow up:

    • Check on recording policy from CDC perspective

    • proposal to create a pre-analytical document for wound specimen collection to CLSI was submitted - in review

    • CLSI document on respiratory sampels = PRE-07 for publication in spring 2026

  • Need to decide why, and once we do connect with CAP Informatics Committee and ASCP

  • Check with Sheila Abner on NHSN terms for specimen CMT

  • Riki’s Follow up - none of these got done yet

Specimen CMT terms review

Christina

no updates

Lab tests as procedures or orderables

 

For orderables - check with Eza / Stan about the new orderables they created - assume in the procedure hierarchy? would that also be for LOINCs that are both? - example of the new codes: https://loinc.org/111153-3/; those would end up in Lab Procedure Hierarchy

LOINC SNOMED Ontology work:

  • supports comparable data in countries that use different code systems

  • supports reasoning across different hierarchies and allows for easier value set creation when differnt LOINC axis are concerned

Definition from SNOMED for these hierarchies:

  • Observable entity: Information about a quality/property to be observed and how it will be observed

  • Evaluation procedure: No definition, other than it uses attributes that are similar to those used in the Observable entity hierarchy.  Our policy is to not add any new evaluation procedures that would logically be in the Observable entity hierarchy.

    • this has Lab tests as child (and a few are also at the same level as lab test - maybe harmonizing

  • Technique is a separate hierarchy used to model observable entities - it reperesents the LOINC part ‘method’: A technique (also called method) is a particular way of performing an activity or task. - not an option to represent orderable tests or resulted tests, which means we should go back to the method mappings https://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem-v3-ObservationMethod.html and adjust to use technique SCT concepts

    • procedure hierarchy has method attribute (action to achieve procedure - limited to action (qualifier value)), is not allowed in the evaluation procedure sub-hierarchy

    • while techinque is just for observable hierarchy

Colonoscopy example:

Reference links:

clinical guidelines: Official journal of the American College of Gastroenterology | ACG

Quality Indicators: Official journal of the American College of Gastroenterology | ACG

Discussion:

Specimen CMT - Hosting Options

Discussed CMT concept map proposal for HL7 TI WG

  • How can we publish the content in the dB?

  • SNOMED CT Extension and use of RefSets (start with VSAC value sets as proof of concept and then migrate over) to indicate:

    • preferred specimen types by domain

    • maybe also terms that need additional attributes (by kind of attribute) if we also write an implementation guide for it

  • How do we decide what format to share this in - get input from EHR-s and LIS vendors:

    • Write letter of mulitple stakeholders to request EHR-s and LIS vendors to implement

      • indicating that this is a patient safety issue, as incorrect Abx treatment will contribute to multi-drug resistance (use CTSI findings to provide background)

      • focus on blood, urine, wound cultures (get data from NHSN, too)

    • Nancy is talking to DHQP about the linkage with specimen collection

    • While we have HIT certification that is for the EHR-s there is currently no enforcement for implementation at the organizations

    • need C-suite buy-in

    • Professional organizations - like CAP and ACOS and AJCC get them to write the synoptic reports (better structuring of data) - for surgical aspects - similar to what CAP has done for Cancer (though they do not have the SCT codes included in the past - may be including SNOMED CT starting in 2025, but they are also using the SCT codes for observables) Synoptic reporting for cancer surgery: Current requirements and future state: The four CoC accreditation standards that include synoptic operative reporting requirements apply to sentinel lymph node biopsy for breast cancer (Standard 5.3), axillary lymph node dissection for breast cancer (Standard 5.4), wide local excision for primary cutaneous melanoma (Standard 5.5), and colonic resection for colon cancer (Standard 5.6). These accreditation standards were developed from the evidence-based recommendations for cancer surgery detailed in the Operative Standards for Cancer Surgery manuals.7,8

    • try to get AMA support to get providers to adopt this

    • Reach out to IDSA, too

European Semantic work

 

Link to the German FHIR IG around suceptibility testing:

ARS Implementation Guide (EN)

Semantic Example section: ARS Implementation Guide (EN)

Creating Value Sets for specimen related attributes

 

  • Specimen reject reason table review - review the “unsatisfactory for evaluation due to …” concepts

  • the European Vocab group is working on a lot of sepcimen re,ated concepts - should check with them

  • Container follow up work:

Specimen CMT pilot implementers

no updates

Specimen CMT - education

no updates

  • Need education for providers and IT folks that helps with set up of the EHR-S / LIS configuration -this can be supported / accomplished? with the Implementaiton Guide we could write

  • if we have a use case of how a patient is impacted on their journey through the healthcare system - CAP created a nice video that showed how patient care was affected by incorrect data SHIELD FDA BAA Year 2

Specimen CMT - tracking implementation impact

  • Setting baseline

  • Define metrics

no updates

 

Specimen CMT - Compare to NHSN Medical Terminology

 

 Will get updated vocab at a later date - from Sheila Abner

Future projects for this call after CMT

no updates

  • In general the call is intended as a forum for ANY messaging related issues to work out.

  • In the past we have

    • reviewed containers re-vive that - and how does that interact with devices (UDI identification?)

    • review code systems around additives (HL70371 and SCT substance and product hierarchies)

    • started work on cross-mapping between HL7 method codes and SNOMED CT procedure / technique concepts

      • American College of Surgeons is working on procedure protocol and synoptic data elements / surgical synoptic reports - we could work with them together on that

    • Look at other HL7 tables that we would want to migrate SCT (i.e., Specimen Condition table, etc.)

Recording:

 

Chat:

 

Action items

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