Medical records are voluminous and are getting accumulated by the hour.
Today standardization issues have become important even to the individual physician / practitioner.
Modern digital technology plays an important part in standardizing the medical information management.
It was in the year 1996 that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) were signed into law.
Today there are many organizations that are developing health-related standards.
Which are these national bodies? Here is the list.

American Standards and Testing Materials (ASTM)

Accredited Standards Committee (ASC)

Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM)

Health Level 7 (HL 7)

Logical Observation Identifier Names and Codes (LOINC)

Systemized Nomenclature of Human and Veterinary Medicine (SNOMED)

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)

National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP)

The ASTM Committee on Health Informatics E-31 creates standards for exchanging messages about clinical observations, medical logic electro physiologic signals, health care identifiers, and for the functionality of the system.
The ASC X12 creates standards for exchanging insurance, eligibility, and managed care information and deals with all different aspects of insurance and insurance-related business processes.
While DICOM is for the exchange of digital biomedical images, HL 7 develops standards for exchanging data among clinical systems.
IEEE develops standards for medical device information and a general informatics framework and NCPDP develops standards to create and promote data interchange and processing standards to the pharmacy services sector of the health care industry.
SNOMED is a standardized coded system for representing clinical information developed and maintained by the College of American Pathologists.
LOINC is developing standards that provide a set of universal names and ID codes for identifying laboratory and clinical test results.