Work

NCI Thesaurus: A semantic model integrating cancer-related clinical and molecular information

Year: 2006

Type: article

Abstract: Over the last 8 years, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has launched a major effort to integrate molecular and clinical cancer-related information within a unified biomedical informatics framework, with controlled terminology as its foundational layer. The NCI Thesaurus is the reference terminology underpinning these efforts. It is designed to meet the growing need for accurate, comprehensive, and shared terminology, covering topics including: cancers, findings, drugs, therapies, anatomy, genes, pathways, cellular and subcellular processes, proteins, and experimental organisms. The NCI Thesaurus provides a partial model of how these things relate to each other, responding to actual user needs and implemented in a deductive logic framework that can help maintain the integrity and extend the informational power of what is provided. This paper presents the semantic model for cancer diseases and its uses in integrating clinical and molecular knowledge, more briefly examines the models and uses for drug, biochemical pathway, and mouse terminology, and discusses limits of the current approach and directions for future work.

Source: Journal of Biomedical Informatics

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2006.02.013

Authors: Nicholas Sioutos, Sherri de Coronado, Margaret W. Haber, Frank W. Hartel, Wen-Ling Shaiu, Lawrence W. Wright

Institutions: Aspen Systems (United States), National Cancer Institute

Language: English

Topic: Biomedical Text Mining and Ontologies

Subfield: Health Informatics

Field: Medicine

Domain: Health Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,410