Menagerie: A text-mining tool to support animal-human translation in neurodegeneration research.

Discovery studies in animals constitute a cornerstone of biomedical research, but suffer from lack of generalizability to human populations. We propose that large-scale interrogation of these data could reveal patterns of animal use that could narrow the translational divide. We describe a text-mining approach that extracts translationally useful data from PubMed abstracts.

Extending SemRep to the Public Health Domain.

We describe the use of a domain-independent methodology to extend a natural language processing (NLP) application, SemRep (Rindflesch, Fiszman, & Libbus, 2005), based on the knowledge sources afforded by the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS®) (Humphreys, Lindberg, Schoolman, & Barnett, 1998) to support the area of health promotion within the public health domain. Public health professionals require good information about successful health promotion policies and programs that might be considered for application within their own communities. Our effort seeks to improve access to relevant information for the public health profession, to help those in the field remain an information-savvy workforce.

A methodology for extending domain coverage in SemRep.

We describe a domain-independent methodology to extend SemRep coverage beyond the biomedical domain. SemRep, a natural language processing application originally designed for biomedical texts, uses the knowledge sources provided by the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS©). Ontological and terminological extensions to the system are needed in order to support other areas of knowledge.

A Knowledge Intensive Approach to Mapping Clinical Narrative to LOINC.

Many natural language processing systems are being applied to clinical text, yet clinically useful results are obtained only by honing a system to a particular context. We suggest that concentration on the information needed for this processing is crucial and present a knowledge intensive methodology for mapping clinical text to LOINC. The system takes published case reports as input and maps vital signs and body measurements and reports of diagnostic procedures to fully specified LOINC codes.

Knowledge-based methods to help clinicians find answers in MEDLINE.

Objectives: Large databases of published medical research can support clinical decision making by providing physicians with the best available evidence. The time required to obtain optimal results from these databases using traditional systems often makes accessing the databases impractical for clinicians. This article explores whether a hybrid approach of augmenting traditional information retrieval with knowledge-based methods facilitates finding practical clinical advice in the research literature.

Semantic processing to enhance retrieval of diagnosis citations from Medline.

We investigate the use of natural language processing (NLP) for enhancing precision when retrieving Medline citations on diagnostic procedure. Inter-annotator agreement is described as part of the evaluation method, and preliminary results are presented.

Semantic characteristics of MEDLINE citations useful in therapeutic decision-making.

MEDLINE retrieval using several information retrieval algorithms was characterized for relevance to point-of-care therapeutic decisions for a sample of clinical queries in family practice. Evaluation methodology is described and preliminary results are presented.

Using UMLS metathesaurus concepts to describe medical images: dermatology vocabulary.

Web servers at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) displayed images of ten skin lesions to practicing dermatologists and provided an online form for capturing text they used to describe the pictures. The terms were submitted to the UMLS Metathesaurus (Meta). Concepts retrieved, their semantic types, definitions and synonyms, were returned to each subject in a second web-based form.

Cellular radio telecommunication for health care: benefits and risks.

Cellular radio telecommunication has increased exponentially with many applications to health care reported. The authors attempt to summarize published applications with demonstrated effect on health care, review briefly the rapid evolution of hardware and software standards, explain current limitations and future potential of data quality and security, and discuss issues of safety.

Webcasting videoconferences over IP: a synchronous communication experiment.

A multipoint videoconference was webcast live to an audience who could communicate with conference panelists and each other via chat. The videoconference, webcast, and chat were done entirely over the Internet. Seven panelists at four conference sites that had Internet2 connectivity and were located in different time zones within the continental United States discussed the topic of "Evaluating Health Professions Education and Information Resources on the Web.