Daniel L. Rubin MD, Presenter: Grant, General Electric Company

1) To recognize the need for standardized terminology for radiology imaging examinations. 2) To introduce the RadLex Playbook, which provides standard names for radiology orderables and procedure steps. 3) To demonstrate the value of RadLex Playbook in applications to improve radiology practice and regulatory compliance.

Every hospital performs virtually the same types of imaging procedures, but they all name them differently. The lack of a standardized naming scheme for radiology procedures thwarts the ability of radiologists and hospitals to share data or to consistently measure and track imaging procedures in a standard way. The need for standard imaging procedure names recently has been heightened by the emergence of a national dose registry that will establish benchmarks on dose exposure and by interest by FDA and other organizations to track and improve quality measures related to imaging. Thus, the RSNA RadLex project recently created the Playbook, a system for creating standard names for radiology procedures and procedure steps. The RadLex Playbook provides a comprehensive set of standard names in addition to a grammar that enables institutions to map their existing list of terms to Playbook terms. Existing hospital information technology infrastructure can thus adopt Playbook immediately and begin deriving the benefits from this standard terminology. In this presentation we will introduce the Playbook, describe experience adopting it at several institutions, and present use cases on how it will enable radiologists and hospitals to meet emerging regulatory requirements and participate in national quality initiatives. Hospitals, payers, registries, researchers, radiologists, and even patients—will be able to refer to their imaging studies using a common language and communicate radiology information unambiguously.  

Rubin, D, Standardized Terminology in Radiology: Applications and New Developments (Informatics: Advances).  Radiological Society of North America 2012 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, November 25 - November 30, 2012 ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2012/11001624.html