PITUS-18-20 Project

Pathology Information, Terminology and Units Standardisation (PITUS-18-20) Project continues the standardisation of pathology requesting and reporting. The Project is fully funded by the Department of Health.

The PITUS-18-20 Steering Committee has co-ordinated the Project. All key stakeholders were represented on the Steering committee.

The Project activities have been split across five working groups:

  1. Evaluation and Promotion will educate and promote SPIA uptake and audit SPIA conformance in pathology reports
  2. Terminology Development will maintain and expand pathology terminology reference sets the with Australian Digital Health Agency and HL7 Australia and provide advice to the National Clinical Terminology Service (NCTS) on pathology reference sets
  3. Systems Design and Compliance will specify systems for maintenance and publication of SPIA artefacts by NCTS, develop FHIR extensions to record terminology related knowledge from SPIA, and devise a system for linkage of terminology to knowledge in Manual and Labtests On-line
  4. SPRC Infostructure and Conformance will develop a model and terminology for four protocols and undertake Informatics External Quality Assurance (IEQA) trial for one protocol
  5. Report Standardisation will develop policy for results flagging and for the grouping of tests in pathology reports.

30 September 2020: The RCPA SPIA Terminology Reference Sets and Information Models have been updated to v1.4 on the NCTS website for authorised users. Terms of Use, Release Notes and updated Terminology Reference Sets are now available. FHIR Terminology Resources (Code Systems, Value Sets and Concept Maps) are also available for download using JSON, XML or TSV.

Standards for Pathology Informatics in Australia (SPIA)
The RCPA Board of Directors have officially endorsed the Standards for Pathology Informatics in Australia (SPIA) and associated information models and terminology reference sets, following internal and public review and endorsement from all of the main stakeholders.

To download the Standards for Pathology Informatics in Australia (SPIA) v3.0 and associated information models and terminology reference sets go to the Downloads page.

Australian Pathology Messaging - Localisation of HL7 Version 2.4

The PITUS 15-16 Project collaborated with HL7 Australia to developed the Australian Pathology Messaging - Localisation of HL7 v2.4, Release 1 was a localisation of the HL7 International messaging standards, which will provide the required information for implementers of electronic pathology messaging in one document.

The Australian Digital Health Agency has published a draft release of the Diagnostic Report FHIR Implementation Guide 1.0.0 now available for stakeholder engagement and review.

The NCTS Tool Development Requirements have been developed to assist laboratory software vendors, implementers and FHIR subject matter experts to author, maintain and validate the RCPA SPIA information models and terminology reference sets in one central location without error. They are intended to improve the efficiency, quality and integrity of RCPA SPIA terminology and related artefacts and to support laboratory accreditation processes.

NCTS Tool development Requirements (296 kB)

PITUS wg2 contacted Microbiology, Serology, Virology and Molecular Biology experts representing every Australian public and private laboratory to ascertain the scope of sample types, methodologies and reporting units being used for COVID-19 testing after fielding various queries regarding the most appropriate requesting and reporting terminology for SARS-CoV-2.  Subsequently, mappings to all existing SNOMED-CT (requesting ) and LOINC (reporting) terminologies was undertaken, with a gap analysis demonstrating the need for further requesting and reporting terms to be developed for Australian laboratories.

To date a number of RCPA endorsed subsets of SNOMED-CT and LOINC terms have been developed, initially specimen specific, but now more generic.  To improve the quality of national data collection, adoption of the RCPA endorsed SARS-CoV-2 terms by all Australian public and private laboratory providers is highly recommended.  The standardisation of requesting terms improves the ability for clinicians to identify the correct orderable from multiple provider order catalogues as consultations occur across different organisations and clinical settings.   The standardisation and encoding of COVID-19 data not only improves overall data quality, but also allows for greater insights to be derived at a national level for the retrospective analysis of the pandemic, such as geographic distribution of results, hospital acquired infections, quality, or cost of various testing methods, etc.

RCPA endorsed COVID-19 terms v2.2 05.08.20 (75 kB)

The SPIA Exemplar Reports have been designed to provide laboratory staff and software vendors with visual representations of SPIA compliant reports for a range of disciplines with respect to report formatting.  The inclusion or exclusion of tests, Preferred terms, Reference Intervals and the order in which the tests appear on each report are not necessarily meant to be indicative of true report content, merely to demonstrate formatting.

HL7 V2, FHIR and CDA representations of each Exemplar Report are now available to assist software vendors with the design of SPIA compliant messages..

Your feedback is important and greatly appreciated; please email any comments on these reports to vanessac@rcpa.edu.au

20201201 SPIA Exemplar HL7v2-FHIR-CDA Examples V010 (5.3 MB)
Exemplar Report Chlamydia trachomatis NAT v1.8 (109 kB)
Exemplar Report Chromosome studies v1.6 (111 kB)
Exemplar Report EPP v1.8 (117 kB)
Exemplar Report FBC v1.8 (117 kB)
Exemplar Report Haemochromatosis gene screening v1.7 (112 kB)
Exemplar Report HbsAb v1.8 (110 kB)
Exemplar Report Histo Colorectal SPRC v1.4 (197 kB)
Exemplar Report IgE v1.7 (110 kB)
Exemplar Report INR v1.9 (111 kB)
Exemplar Report SARS-CoV-2 Serology v1.0 (111 kB)
Exemplar Report SARS-CoV-2NAT v1.0 (112 kB)
SPIA Exemplar Report Blood Gases v1.6 (126 kB)
SPIA Exemplar Report EUC v1.6 (118 kB)
SPIA Exemplar Report Iron studies v1.0 (113 kB)
SPIA Exemplar Report Lipids v1.7 (116 kB)
SPIA Exemplar Report Urine MCS v1.8 (126 kB)

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22-Jan-2021
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