Principles

Each concept in the ontology shall have a unique, non-overlapping meaning. Where two LOINC codes could reasonably apply to the same concept, the working group will select one LOINC code to use and document the rationale. The outcome will be coding consistency — that is, any given document will be assigned the same code regardless of which system or jurisdiction is doing the coding.

The display names of the concepts must convey the correct semantics to the greatest number of physicians, clinicians and patients. Alterations to the LOINC display names will be done to meet this goal for the Canadian users.
- The potential reason for alteration are:
  - To use Canadian terms. This will be assessed by reference to Canadian expert bodies, the assessment of words used in Canadian medical documents and the judgment of the working group. The judgment of the working group will take precedence.
  - To choose words understood by community physicians and clinicians. This will be judged by polling a select group of community physicians and clinicians, as well as working group judgment. Plain language is preferred as long as it does not reduce semantic accuracy.
    - Contextual note: The emphasis on community physicians and clinicians is a result of the document classification being utilized for only distributed documents (with EMRs and Repositories as initial end points). This will be the only source of these documents to this large community and so their needs are paramount. Hospital based physicians will see many of the documents they utilize daily within their hospital system (that will typically utilize a different coding system).

The display name is intended to enable physicians, clinicians, and patients to quickly find the information they are looking for by browsing a list of documents. The benefit of the visual display name is consistency of the name construction, making it easy to narrow the search visually. Where the user interface permits, visible LOINC axis values enhance the sorting and filtering.

We will provide shortened names that could be reasonably expected to fit any application’s user interface and convey the concept with minimal letters/effort. The LOINC short name will be adopted as the preferred short display name wherever it meets Canadian display requirements. However, if the display name changes, the shortened name will likely need to change. Shortened display names must not introduce ambiguity with other concepts in the value set, and must not imply a scope broader than the underlying LOINC concept's post-coordinated definition.

Clarity