Three projects, PHLIP, ELR, and LRN LIMSi, are collaborating as part of a community of practice to advance laboratory messaging and data exchange. As a community, these three projects build upon each other's work by harmonizing the use of message elements, vocabulary standards, and sharing tools, best practices, and templates with the goal of assisting laboratories rapidly develop electronic data exchange that can be used to comply with Meaningful Use.

Data exchange in public health is increasingly standards-based.  Applicable standards include healthcare interoperability standards such as HL7, LOINC and SNOMED, and new and emerging standards and directives, including those issued by the Federal government.  This panel illustrates harmonization efforts among three initiatives: LRN LIMS Integration (LIMSi), Electronic Laboratory Reporting (ELR) and the Public Health Laboratory Interoperability Project (PHLIP).  These efforts provide direction, model processes, and opportunities for interaction and collaboration ensuring that labs participating in all 3 initiatives exchange data in a manner consistent with the standards and directives applicable to each project while minimizing variation in vocabulary and message structure.

While all three initiatives are working towards standard electronic data exchange of laboratory information, each has a different charge and, therefore, focal point.  ELR is focused on enabling Meaningful Use of laboratory results for public health.  PHLIP provides interoperability standards and guidance for laboratory orders and results between Public Health Labs (PHL) including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab.  Finally, LRN LIMSi concentrates on data exchange of laboratory results between the Laboratory Response Network (LRN) labs and the CDC's LRN Program.

This panel provides an overview of the 3 initiatives and their respective use cases, requirements, and applicable standards.  It reviews the topics discussed and solutions created within the Laboratory Messaging Community of Practice (LMCoP), which is the forum for bringing together these 3 initiatives. We also describe the LMCoP’s involvement with Standards Development Organizations (SDOs), including HL7, and with other projects and efforts such as the Vocabulary Messaging CoP (VM CoP).

Finally, the panel includes a description of next steps and future directions for the projects and the community of practice, emphasizing changes in messaging and vocabulary standards that will be proposed as a result of the work to harmonize ELR, PHLIP and LRN LIMSi.