Development of Unified Lab Test Result Master for Multiple Facilities.

A clinical study requires massive amounts of of lab test data, especially for rare diseases. Before creating a protocol, the hypothesis if the protocol will work with enough amount of patients' dataset has to be proved. However, a single facility, such as a university hospital, often faces a lack of number of patients for specific target diseases. Even if collecting datasets from several facilities, there is no active master table that can merge lab test results between the facility datasets. Therefore, the authors develop a unified lab test result master. Because test master standards such as JLAC10 and LOINC are provided from a viewpoint of academic classification of laboratory medicine, the classification does not fit clinical classification, which doctors understand with a mind-set of establishing a clinical study protocol. The authors establish a method to unify masters using an active lab test result master from two university hospitals.