minimal Common Oncology Data Elements (mCODE) Implementation Guide
3.0.0 - STU3 Release United States of America flag

This page is part of the HL7 FHIR Implementation Guide: minimal Common Oncology Data Elements (mCODE) Release 1 - US Realm | STU1 (v3.0.0: STU 3) based on FHIR R4. This is the current published version. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

Terminology

This implementation guide draws on a number of formal terminologies (code systems). Several guiding principles were applied in selecting terminologies for mCODE:

  1. Fit for purpose
  2. Conformance with US Core and FHIR
  3. Commonly used in real world practice

The following table presents the external code systems (and naming conventions) adopted in mCODE, and their primary purpose:

Code System Domain FHIR IG Publishing support? HL7 Canonical
CPT Procedure codes No http://www.ama-assn.org/go/cpt
HGNC Gene identification No http://www.genenames.org
HGVS Sequence variant nomenclature Yes http://varnomen.hgvs.org
HTA Various HL7 V2 and FHIR-specific codes Yes http://terminology.hl7.org
ICD-O-3 Cancer morphology and topology codes No http://terminology.hl7.org/CodeSystem/icd-o
ICD-10-CM Diagnosis codes Yes http://hl7.org/fhir/sid/icd-10-cm
ICD-10-PCS Procedure codes No http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10
LOINC Observation and laboratory codes, answer codes Yes http://loinc.org
NCBI GTR Genomic test codes No https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gtr/
NCBI ClinVar Genomic variations No http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/clinvar
NCIT Cancer terminology No http://ncicb.nci.nih.gov/xml/owl/EVS/Thesaurus.owl
RxNorm Medication codes Yes http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm
Sequence Ontology DNA change types No http://www.sequenceontology.org/
SNOMED CT Disorders, body structures, findings, qualifiers Yes http://snomed.info/sct
UCUM Units of measure Yes http://unitsofmeasure.org

Key:

  • CPT - Current Procedural Terminology (American Medical Association)
  • HGNC - Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) Gene Nomenclature Committee
  • HGVS - Human Genome Variation Society
  • HTA - HL7 Terminology Authority
  • ICD - International Classification of Diseases (World Health Organization)
    • ICD-O-3 - Oncology, 3rd revision
    • ICD-10-CM - Clinical Modification, 10th revision
    • ICD-10-PCS - Procedure Coding System, 10th revision
  • LOINC - Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes
  • NCBI - National Center for Biotechnology Information (National Institutes of Health) (US)
    • NCBI GTR - Genomic Testing Registry
    • NCBI ClinVar - Not an acronym
  • NCIT - National Cancer Institute (NCI) Thesaurus
  • RxNorm - From National Library of Medicine (US)
  • SNOMED CT - Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms
  • UCUM - Unified Code for Units of Measure
  • UMLS - Unified Medical Language System Metathesaurus

Local Code Systems

Local code systems SnomedRequestedCS are provided for terms submitted but not yet published and/or approved by SNOMED. It is expected that the local codes will be replaced with approved LOINC and SNOMED terms in a future technical correction to the STU 2 IG. Where codes have already been assigned by SNOMED, but not yet published, those codes are used as local codes to reduce future changes. In other cases, the submission numbers are used as the local codes.

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