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.