Portuguese Catalog for Laboratory Analysis

The Portuguese Catalog for Laboratory Analysis began on 2012, after the Portuguese Steering Committee for Information Technology identified the necessity to standardize the concepts and records within a critical area in healthcare provision – laboratory tests.

The standard documentation in this field arose with the aim to create a common language for the healthcare professionals and the IT systems that support their practice and records.  

The first steps on this project were taken in partnership with the Medical College of Clinical Pathology, the work group began compiling catalogue's data and began to architect the structure that the health IT products must embrace in order to enable their record.

To allow this data exchange within the national territory or cross boarders, it is mandatory to adopt an international certified language.

In Portugal, the majority of the laboratories sends their results individually, through the use of local codes without correlation to the ones used in other institution. Each laboratory uses diverse nomenclatures for each test.   

This degree of variation is a huge obstacle for the development of clinical repositories as well as for the creation of research databases (within or outside the NHS).

In this context, LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes) arose as the standard adopted in Portugal for the description and exchange of this laboratory  findings.

This necessity of data standardization and research databases creation is shared in a global level.

The Portuguese Catalogue for Laboratoy Analysis is on its final development stages (v1.0) and will be able for consultation here.