Stream: terminology
Topic: UMLS code systems
Thomas Moser (Nov 06 2017 at 15:42):
I am currently working with UMLS (Unified Medical Language System). This comprises a big collection of concepts of many different code systems (about 200 code systems), see here: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/sourcereleasedocs/index.html for a list.
I need URLs for all of these code systems. Few of the code systems are already listed here: https://www.hl7.org/fhir/terminologies-systems.html
but most of them are not. For example, "Multum MediSource Lexicon" is a code system contained in UMLS and has the abbreviation "MMSL" in the UMLS content. Using this, MMSL|4862 is a coding for "Ibuprofen".
Since it is not realistic to get URLs for all of these 200 code systems from the respective content owners, it would be great if FHIR could set URLs for these systems. Since FHIR already has defined
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm
for RxNorm, which is also contained in UMLS, I think it would be very nice to have the similar URLs for all the other code systems contained in UMLS like the following
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/<SAB>
where <SAB> is the abbreviation of the code system as provided by UMLS. The above example for "Multum MediSource Lexicon" would then be
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/mmsl
(in small letters to be consistent with rxnorm).
Would you agree to this proposal?
Eric Haas (Nov 06 2017 at 17:11):
"Since it is not realistic to get URLs for all of these 200 code systems from the respective content owners, it would be great if FHIR could set URLs for these systems. "
What is our policy here? I have always tried to get the content owners to approve my suggestions. Often with little or no feedback leaving me stuck with the OID?
Simone Heckmann (Nov 06 2017 at 17:24):
I think the pattern Thomas suggests makes a lot of sense. We can still carry the OIDs as alternative identifiers, if they already exist.
Simone Heckmann (Nov 06 2017 at 17:26):
...assuming that http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ is in fact the owner's url :)
Eric Haas (Nov 06 2017 at 18:21):
I think it is presumptuous to assign them. the owner may want a resolvable URI a la http://snomed.info/sct
Simone Heckmann (Nov 06 2017 at 19:03):
Well, if - at some point - they want to resolve the urls, they still can.
Grahame Grieve (Nov 06 2017 at 20:33):
I think it would be good to create a task for this so we could take it to Vocab
Simone Heckmann (Nov 07 2017 at 08:19):
@Thomas Moser : Do you have a GForge Account yet? If not I'd be happy to file the tracker item on your behalf...just let me know.
Thomas Moser (Nov 07 2017 at 08:43):
@Simone Heckmann No, I don't have a GForge Account. Indeed, I would appreciate if you could file this item on my behalf, Thanks a lot!
Simone Heckmann (Nov 07 2017 at 08:46):
done: GF#14137
Thomas Moser (Nov 07 2017 at 08:50):
Just to mention in addition: For most of the code systems I could not find an OID either.
Grahame Grieve (Nov 07 2017 at 10:01):
I thought that might be the case ...
Rob Hausam (Nov 07 2017 at 18:38):
Thanks, @Thomas Moser and @Simone Heckmann. We'll look at this in Vocab.
David Booth (Nov 07 2017 at 23:27):
+1 to the idea of giving URIs to these.
David Booth (Nov 07 2017 at 23:28):
But I'm also wondering why the UMLS folks didn't do it already.
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
