Scope
1.1 This specification covers the construction of elected laboratory test and analyte names, because data concerning clinical laboratory tests must identify these tests in a common fashion if such data are to be transferable between databases or to be recognized in lookups or searches. It details the representations of test and analyte names as they are used in the clinical laboratory and in either the patient care record or the messages that exchange requests for those tests and analytes and return results to the requestor for insertion into the record. This specification details the form of the elected standard test name and resulting analytes in records and messages. It was written to unify several existing conventions that have been published for the identification of laboratory procedures or other billable or cost management items. It is intended to produce an explicit identifier not only of the test but also of each of the constituent results for each unique analyte. It is applicable to those situations that refer to the names of either the tests or the analytes resulting from clinical laboratory testing. These situations may include the following:Computer-based Patient Record Systems (CPR), Clinical Laboratory Information Management Systems (CLIMS), billing systems, cost identification and management systems, clinical decision support systems, epidemiologic registries and databases, and clinical research information management systems. The mnemonics of that name and the codes to be used as unique identifiers for the names of either the tests or resulting analytes are given as examples in a nonnormative appendix.
