Methods Inf Med 1995; 34(01/02): 158-64
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1634595
Original article
Schattauer GmbH

Use of the Unified Medical Language System in Patient Care at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center

J. J. Cimino
1   Columbia University Center for Medical Informatics, New York, USA
› Author Affiliations
This work was supported by the National Library of Medicine and the IBM Corporation.
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
09 February 2018 (online)

Abstract:

The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) project at the United States National Library of Medicine contains and organizes a large number of terms from controlled medical vocabularies. This study examines the suitability of the UMLS for representing patient care information as it exists in the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (CPMC) clinical information system. Comparisons were made between the semantic types, semantic relations and medical concepts of the UMLS and the data model entities, semantic classes, semantic relations and concepts in the CPMC system. Results of the comparison demonstrate that the UMLS structural model is appropriate for representing CPMC vocabularies and patient data and that the UMLS concepts provide excellent coverage of CPMC concepts in many areas. Recommendations are made for enhancing UMLS structure to provide additional coverage of the CPMC model. It is concluded that content expansion to provide better coverage of clinical terminology is possible within the current UMLS model.

 
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