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UNIFIED MEDICAL
LANGUAGE SYSTEMS (UMLS)

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The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is a
long term research and development project that
started in 1986 by the U.S. National Library of
Medicine (NLM)
The UMLS is not a gigantic and comprehensive
medical vocabulary
The UMLS is a relational database connecting “by
concept” over 60 vocabularies, thesauri, medical
problem lists etc.
Purpose

To aid the development of systems that
help health professionals and researchers
retrieve and integrate electronic
biomedical information form a variety of
sources, such as:

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Computer-based Patient Records
Bibliographic databases
Factual (full text) databases
Administrative health data
Expert systems
UMLS Uses

Electronic patient records

Natural language processing

Information retrieval

Thesaurus construction

Automated indexing
UMLS COMPONENTS
Metathesaurus
Semantic Network
Lexicon
UMLS Source “Vocabularies”

Widely varying purposes, structures, properties
that do not add up to single ontology or view of
the world:





Thesauri, e.g., MeSH (Medical Subject
Headings)
Statistical Classifications, e.g., ICD
Billing Codes, e.g., CPT
Clinical coding systems, e.g., SNOMED
Lists of controlled terms, e.g., HL7 valid values
How to combine them?
Not reallly ...
METATHESAURUS
Contains more than 60 vocabularies and
classifications.
 776.940 concepts
 2,1 millions of concept names
 11 millions of relationships between
concepts

Metathesaurus - Relations


Preserves the
structure of the
original sources.
Add news
relationships
between the
concepts
METATHESAURUS
Organization
Synonymous terms
CUI
Preferred term
Metathesaurus structure
CONCEPTs
TERMs
STRING
CUI’s
LUI’s
SUI’s
STRING
Is organized by concept or
meaning; its purpose is to link
alternative names and views of the
same concept together and to
identify useful relationships
between different concepts..
STRING
STRING
Metathesaurus structure example
CONCEPTS
(CUIs)
TERMS
(LUIs)
STRING
(SUIs)
C0004238
L0004238
S0016668
(preferred)
Atrial Fibrillation
Atrial Fibrillations
Auricular Fibrillation
Auricular Fibrillations
(preferred)
Atrial Fibrillation
Atrial Fibrillations
(preferred)
Atrial Fibrillation
S0016669
Atrial Fibrillations
L0004327
S0016899
(synonym)
Auricular
Fibrillation(preferred)
Auricular Fibrillation
(preferred)
Auricular Fibrillation
S0016900
(plural variant)
Auricular Fibrillations
Semantic Network
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

All information about specific concepts is
found in the Metathesaurus
The Network provides information about the
basic semantic types that are assigned to
these concepts, and it defines the
relationships that may hold between the
semantic types
It defines these types, both with textual
descriptions and by means of the information
inherent in its hierarchies
Semantic Network Example
“BIOLOGIC FUNTION”
HIERARCHY
LINK
“ISA”
BIOLOGIC FUNCTION
LINK
PHYSIOLOGIC
FUNCTION
ORGANISM
FUNCTION
MENTAL
PROCESS
ORGAN OR
TISSUE
FUNCTION
CELL
FUNCTION
“ISA”
PATHOLOGIC
FUNCTION
MOLECULAR
FUNCTION
GENETIC
FUNCTION
DISEASE
OR
SYNDROME
MENTAL
OR
BEHAVIORAL
DYSFUNCTION
CELL
OR
MOLECULAR
DYSFUNCTION
NEOPLASTIC
PROCESS
EXPERIMENTAL
MODEL
OF
DISEASE
Relationship between Metathesaurus
and Semantic Network
LEXICON


It provide the lexical information needed for the
SPECIALIST Natural Language Processing System
It is a general English lexicon that includes many
biomedical terms (commonly occurring English
words and biomedical vocabulary)

The lexicon entry for each word (or term) records
the

syntactic

morphological

orthographic information needed by the
SPECIALIST natural language processing system
UNIFIED MEDICAL LANGUAGE
SYSTEM - Summary

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Standard source of concepts and synonyms.
Multilingual
Broad extension.
Allow integration between applications
REFERENCES
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/umls.html
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/META2.HTML
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/META3.HTML
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/META4.HTML
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http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/cbm/umlscbm.html#6