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Lorie Carey (right) receives her award from Daniel Vreeman, director of LOINC. Photo: Phil Lofton, Regenstrief Institute
Congratulations to Lorie Carey for winning the 2019 LOINC Award for Distinguished Contributions. The award presented by the Regenstrief Institute at a meeting in Indianapolis on June 6 recognizes Lorie's "exceptional and enduring actions, activities and accomplishments that advance and promote LOINC (Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes — a database and universal standard for identifying medical laboratory observations) and its use to improve health."
Lorie's passion for digital health and accessible laboratory test results started during her early years in the laboratory as an Information Technology Manager in the Saskatoon Health Region from 1996-2005.
In 2007, Lorie joined Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) as a LOINC Subject Matter Expert. In this capacity, Lorie began to represent Infoway and Canadians at the semi-annual Lab LOINC meetings, to ensure that Canadian laboratory requirements were well known and represented in this international standard. Canadians appreciated the energy, passion, insight and expertise that Lorie brought to this important work.
As the Infoway LOINC expert, Lorie consistently provided the LOINC committee with valuable advice on various topics and she was a major contributor in several important projects.
During her time at Infoway, Lorie co-developed the pan-Canadian LOINC Observation Code Database (pCLOCD), a Canadian constraint of the larger LOINC terminology.
The pCLOCD is a clinically comprehensive and granular reference terminology that has been customized to meet the needs of Canadian implementers in English and Canadian French.
The Canadian French translation provided each year to Regenstrief for publication as part of the larger LOINC terminology, began with Lorie bringing together a group of French speaking Canadians from Quebec and New Brunswick to complete this work. The January 2019 release of the pCLOCD contains 37,347 records in Canadian French and 38,246 records in English.
Lorie worked with the Canadian Society of Clinical Chemists to add the Canadian recommended units of measure for quantitative laboratory tests in Canada.
At Infoway, Lorie led or supported the development, adoption or adaption of LOINC terminology deliverables to support product implementations, maintenance, education and training.
Lorie was instrumental in the design and implementation of Infoway’s Request Management System, InfoRMS; a web-based application that enables implementers from across Canada to successfully request content changes to LOINC and pCLOCD.
One of the most valuable features of InfoRMS is that it enables all implementers to seamlessly follow the progress and conversation between Regenstrief and Infoway related to any LOINC submission request. Together, this tool and process have increased the quality, precision and turnaround time of LOINC/pCLOCD content requests in Canada.
Today, the pCLOCD is implemented in 11 of 13 jurisdictions in Canada, making it the Canada’s most successfully implemented standard to date.
It continues to grow to truly reflect the laboratory terminology in use in Canada and is now used by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) to define MIS statistics.
As a result, Canadian lab data is now LOINC encoded and digitally consolidated into provincial repositories that provide patients and their health care teams with access to lab results anywhere, any time, on any web-enabled device regardless of where the test was ordered and completed.
Patient access to their lab results has reduced the stress associated with waiting for the provider to call with the results and is especially beneficial to patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes and atrial fibrillation. It allows patients to be actively involved and participate in their health care.
Lorie was formally recognized by the Regenstrief Institute for her efforts to further the development of LOINC on behalf of Canadian implementers and was made an Honorary Lifetime LOINC Premium Member in Dec 2017.
This honour was bestowed upon Lorie in recognition for her exceptional contributions to the translation of LOINC into Canadian French and for helping to grow LOINC into a global standard.
In 2018, Lorie was formally invited by LOINC to deliver a special presentation at the Summer Lab LOINC Conference to showcase the “LOINC Landscape from Canada”. The presentation of the work and the Canadian approach to the use of LOINC was well received and provided an opportunity to share both the Canadian and Infoway experiences, lessons learned and successes from the successful implementation of LOINC in Canada.
Congratulations to Lorie on this well-deserved honour, and thank you for your service to Infoway, Canada, and the international standards community
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