Privacy protection for clinical and genomic data. The use of privacy-enhancing techniques in medicine.

Privacy includes the right of individuals and organisations to determine for themselves when, how and to what extent information about them is communicated to others. The growing need of managing large amounts of both clinical and genetic data raises important legal and ethical challenges. This paper introduces some of the privacy-protection problems related to classical and genomic medicine, and highlights the relevance of trusted third parties and of privacy-enhancing techniques (PETs) in the context of data collection, e.

LOINC, a universal standard for identifying laboratory observations: a 5-year update.

The Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC) database provides a universal code system for reporting laboratory and other clinical observations. Its purpose is to identify observations in electronic messages such as Health Level Seven (HL7) observation messages, so that when hospitals, health maintenance organizations, pharmaceutical manufacturers, researchers, and public health departments receive such messages from multiple sources, they can automatically file the results in the right slots of their medical records, research, and/or public health systems. For each observation, the database includes a code (of which 25 000 are laboratory test observations), a long formal name, a "short" 30-character name, and synonyms.

TSMI: a CEN/TC251 standard for time specific problems in healthcare informatics and telematics.

Time is the most important variable in healthcare, and standards are needed about how to represent information with explicit references to time. In this paper, the European Prestandard 'TSMI: time standards for healthcare specific problems' (CEN/TC251 preENV 12381) is presented which aims to be the first contribution to this harmonisation process, focusing on 'representation' and 'explicit reference' of temporal information in healthcare. The prestandard is mainly composed of two parts.

Logical observation identifier names and codes (LOINC) database: a public use set of codes and names for electronic reporting of clinical laboratory test results.

Many laboratories use electronic message standards to transmit results to their clients. If all laboratories used the same "universal" set of test identifiers, electronic transmission of results would be greatly simplified. The Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC) database aims to be such a code system, covering at least 98% of the average laboratory's tests.