Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

March 23, 2012

Distributed Terminology System 4.0 – Apelon – != a Topic Map?

Filed under: DTS,Health care,Terminology — Patrick Durusau @ 7:24 pm

APELON INTRODUCES DISTRIBUTED TERMINOLOGY SYSTEM 4.0 – Latest Version of Leading Open Source Terminology Management Software Provides Enhanced Interoperability and Integration Capabilities

From the post:

Apelon, Inc., an international provider of terminology and data interoperability solutions, is pleased to announce a major new release (4.0) of its Distributed Terminology System (DTS), the healthcare industry’s leading open source terminology management platform. Based on extensive user feedback from deployments around the world, the new release features significant usability enhancements, new methods for tracking terminology changes over time, and greater integration with Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) and Software Oriented Architecture (SOA) infrastructures. The product will be unveiled this month at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) 2012 Conference and Exhibition in Las Vegas, February 21 – 23, 2012.

Apelon’s DTS is a comprehensive open-source solution for the acquisition, management and practical deployment of standardized healthcare terminologies. Integration of data standards is a critical element for healthcare organizations to realize care improvement. The product supports data standardization and interoperability in Electronic Health Records systems, Healthcare Information Exchanges, and Clinical Decision Systems.

With version 4.0, DTS users easily manage the complete terminology lifecycle. The system provides the ability to transparently view, query, and browse across terminology versions. This facilitates the management of rapidly evolving standards such as SNOMED CT, ICD-10-CM, LOINC and RxNorm, and supports their use for longitudinal electronic health records. Local vocabularies, subsets and cross-maps can be versioned and queried in the same way, meaning that DTS users can tailor and adapt standards to their particular needs. Users also benefit from usability enhancements to DTS applications such as the DTS 4.0 Editor and DTS Browser, including internationalization capabilities for non-English-speaking environments.

To simplify integration into existing enterprise systems, DTS 4.0 is built on the JEE platform, supporting a complete set of web service APIs, in addition to the existing Java and .NET interfaces. Continuing the company’s commitment to open standards, DTS version 4.0 also supports HL7 Common Terminology Services 2 (CTS2).

According to Stephen Coady, Apelon president and CEO, the increasing use of reference terminologies in healthcare has precipitated the need for enhanced functionality in terminology management tools. “DTS 4.0 evidences our long-term commitment to making open source tools that allow organizations worldwide to improve care using reference terminologies. The new version is simpler to use, and will help even more institutions interoperate and integrate the latest decision support technologies into their daily work.”

DTS establishes a single common resource for an organization’s terminology assets that can be deployed across the spectrum of health delivery systems. Apelon made DTS open source in early 2007, providing the industry with significant cost, integration and adoption advantages compared to proprietary solutions. Since then the software has been downloaded by more than 3,500 informaticists and healthcare organizations worldwide.

You can grab a copy of the software (not the 4.0, yet) at Sourceforge: Apelon-DTS.

I just grabbed a copy so it will be several days before I have substantive comments on the 3.5.2 version of DTS at Sourceforge.

Part of what I will be investigating is how DTS differs from a topic map solution. Which one is appropriate for you will depend on your requirements.

October 17, 2011

Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services NKOS

Filed under: Knowledge Organization,Library,Ontology,Terminology,Thesaurus,Vocabularies — Patrick Durusau @ 6:40 pm

Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services NKOS

From the website:

NKOS is devoted to the discussion of the functional and data model for enabling knowledge organization systems/services (KOS), such as classification systems, thesauri, gazetteers, and ontologies, as networked interactive information services to support the description and retrieval of diverse information resources through the Internet.

Knowledge Organization Systems/Services (KOS) model the underlying semantic structure of a domain. Embodied as Web-based services, they can facilitate resource discovery and retrieval. They act as semantic road maps and make possible a common orientation by indexers and future users (whether human or machine). — Douglas Tudhope, Traugott Koch, New Applications of Knowledge Organization Systems

A wide variety of resources that will interest anyone working with knowledge systems. I would expect any number of these to appear in future posts with comments or observations.

CENDI Science Terminology Locator

Filed under: Government Data,Terminology,Vocabularies — Patrick Durusau @ 6:40 pm

CENDI Science Terminology Locator

Another CENDI resource that merits special mention.

From the webpage:

Browse the terminology resources across the U.S. Federal Science Agencies by selecting a topic and clicking the acronym resource link next to the category.

What you get when following one of the terminology links varies from “page not found” for NASA, RDF as an option at NALT, very complex term navigation (DOE), apparently search results in an agency database (USGS), a listing of terms with definitions and some navigation (DTIC), Descriptor Data (MeSH), “page not found” for NBII, to an outdated link for ERIC, but redirects to a thesaurus navigation page.

If you have someone in government who doesn’t think varying terminologies is an issue, send them this link. The varying responses and what you see when you get there should be proof enough for anyone.

CENDI Agency Terminology Resources

Filed under: Government Data,Terminology,Thesaurus,Vocabularies — Patrick Durusau @ 6:39 pm

CENDI Agency Terminology Resources

From the webpage:

The following URLs provide access to the online thesauri and indexing resources of the various federal scientific & technical agencies including CENDI agencies. These resources are of interest to those wishing to know about the scientific and technical terminology used in various fields.

  • Agriculture & Food
  • Applied Science & Technologies
  • Astronomy & Space
  • Biology & Nature
  • Earth & Ocean Sciences
  • Energy & Energy Conservation
  • Environment & Environmental Quality
  • General Science
  • Health & Medicine
  • Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics
  • Science Education

I will post on CENDI but I thought this was important enough to call out separately. Particularly since there are multiple thesauri in some of these categories.

For example:

NAL Agricultural Thesaurus http://agclass.nal.usda.gov/agt/agt.shtml

The NAL Agricultural Thesaurus (NALT) is annually updated and the 2007 edition contains over 65,800 terms organized into 17 subject categories. NALT is searchable online and is available in several formats (PDF, ASCII text, XML, SKOS) for download from the web site. NALT has standard hierarchical, equivalence and associative relationships and provides scope notes and over 2,400 definitions of terms for clarity. Proposals for new terminology can be sent to thes@nal.usda.gov. Published by the National Agricultural Library, United States Department of Agriculture.

Tesauro Agrícola http://agclass.nal.usda.gov/agt_es.shtml

Tesauro Agrícola is the Spanish language translation of the NAL Agricultural Thesaurus (NALT). The thesaurus accommodates the complexity of the Spanish language from a Western Hemisphere perspective. First published in May 2007, the thesaurus contains over 15,700 translated concepts and contains definitions for more than 2,400 terms. The thesaurus is searchable with a Spanish interface and is available in several formats (PDF, ASCII text, XML) for download from the web site. Proposals for new terminology can be sent to thes@nal.usda.gov . Published by the National Agricultural Library, United States Department of Agriculture.

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