The field of clinical medicine, bioinformatics, and research employ an endless list of terms, abbreviations, and codes. To further complicate communication, many of these terms, abbreviations, and codes can vary dramatically due to geography or educational background. This is where the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) comes into the picture. The UMLS unites nomenclatures such as ICD-9, ICD-10, ICD-10-PCS, CPT, SNOMED, LONIC, and other medical vocabularies into one resource. The UMLS was created by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in 1986 as a government funded project. Since that time the UMLS has become a valuable resource to the medical community, and has contributed to the federal standards created for electronic health …show more content…
records. According to the NLM, the UMLS has one fundamental purpose, "to facilitate the development of computer systems that behave as if they 'understand' the meaning of the language of biomedicine and health." The UMLS uses three knowledge sources in order to facilitate its central goal, the UMLS Metathesaurus, the SPECIALIST Lexicon, and the Semantic Network. The UMLS Metathesaurus contains an impressive amount of source vocabularies including: • 134 source vocabularies • 73 families of vocabularies to include standard nomenclature and language variations • General vocabularies for anatomy (UWDA, University of Washington Digital Anatomist Source Information), drugs (RxNorm), and medical devices (UMD, Unique Medical Devices) • Administrative terminologies (ICD administrative terminologies (ICD - 9 -CM, CPT CM, CPT -4) • Data exchange terminologies (HL7, LOINC) • Specialty vocabularies such as dentistry (CDT), and oncology (PDQ) The Metathesaurus uses these vocabularies to organize data into concepts and relationships.
Concepts are determined by attributes and definitions of key terms. Relationships are determined by concepts, and data derived from the various source vocabularies. The Semantics Network utilizes the Metathesaurus to create semantic types (high level relationships), and semantic relationships (relationships between semantic types). Sematic types are organized into a hierarchy of events and entities, for example a gene is an entity and a laboratory test is an event. The SPECIALIST Lexicon is in simple terms a way to unite different inflections, derivatives, and spelling variations of words or terms. For example, the Lexicon will interpret and understand the differences in verbs or nouns used in medical terminology. The UMLS is a very detailed subject, and I have provided a brief overview. To adequately understand the complexity of the UMLS would require many pages of detailed explanations. Mainly, for our purposes we simply need to understand a broad overview to relate the importance of the UMLS to the HIM …show more content…
profession. HIM Professionals need to be able to use and understand the applications and results generated from the UMLS.
Imagine you are analyzing a medical record for clinical documentation improvement, clinical analysis, or quality improvement and you have several free form clinical notes in the chart. To effectively complete the task the unstructured data needs to be converted into structured data, which is when the UMLS is needed. One of the features of the UMLS is that is structured using natural language processing (NLP). A user can type in any term, phrase, or abbreviation and generate possible matches. Inversely, if an HIM professional is using a complete, coded medical record UMLS will provide crosswalks between the various coding systems to come up with an accurate representation of the overall condition and medical care a patient
received. AHIMA calls the UMLS the Rosetta Stone of medical vocabulary, and I believe that is an excellent description. The UMLS unlocks every conceivable term, abbreviation and code in our current medical vocabulary, and provides a valuable resource for HIM professionals.
Generally, the development and adoption of Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems is based on the necessity and essence of technical standards in enhancing healthcare. However, the various health IT tools must comply with some data interchange standards in order to enhance access to clinical records, lessen clinical errors and risks to patient safety, and promote innovation in “individual-based” care (Hammond, Jaffe & Kush, 2009, p.44). The need for compliance with standards is fueled by their role in enabling aggregation of informa...
• Provides a basic level of interoperability among electronic health records (EHRs) maintained by individual physicians and organizations
2. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages to having a standardized terminology within electronic health record
For years now, the healthcare system in the United States have managed patient’s health records through paper charting, this has since changed for the better with the introduction of an electronic medical record (EMR) system. This type of system has helped healthcare providers, hospitals and other ambulatory institutions extract data from a patient’s chart to help expedite clinical diagnosis and providing necessary care. Although this form of technology shows great promise, studies have shown that this system is just a foundation to the next evolution of health technology. The transformation of EMR to electronic heath record system (EHR) is the ultimate goal of the federal government.
Introduction “Health informatics is the science that underlies the academic investigation and practical application of computing and communications technology to healthcare, health education and biomedical research” (UofV, 2012). This broad area of inquiry incorporates the design and optimization of information systems that support clinical practice, public health and research; understanding and optimizing the way in which biomedical data and information systems are used for decision-making; and using communications and computing technology to better educate healthcare providers, researchers and consumers. Although there are many benefits of bringing in electronic health systems there are glaring issues that associate with these systems. The
How does CAC Work? Computer-assisted-coding uses a natural language processor (NLP) to electronically read and interpret text-based clinical documentation from patient charts to identify key words, analyze their context, and suggest
Tan & Payton (2010) describe the electronic health record (EHR), which dates back to the 1950s. These computer-based patient records have evolved into complex systems with many capabilities. They were designed to provide healthcare professionals with a comprehensive picture of a patient’s health status at any time and are meant to automate and streamline the workflow of the healthcare professional (Tan & Payton,
Logic can be understood as the relationship between concepts. As such, there are four major
Health Information Manager (HIM) plays a crucial role coding health record or clinic record. (Sayles 114). The reason because, HIM keep accurate records of the patient symptoms which include medical histories, medical procedures, treatments, and diagnostic testings such as labs, radiology reports, and X-Rays. If the records are not coded correctly on the assignment, it can cause the facility to lose money or fraud. They are thousand different diagnoses we cannot make any assumption we have to appropriately code the information precise. ( Person) I research a scenario from the internet from Medical and Billing.org. I will write about how each section or information assist the coding process.
Hence it is essential to humanize the language of medicine. For years, the language of healthcare remained medicalized, overly specialized and professionalized (Okun 2013) with many acronyms and phrases, leaving little time to understand the vocabulary of the patient. Furthermore, there should be a standardized way to collect a patient’s explanation of a particular illness or medications to learn, code and store this information for future use. Okun’s solution for this issue was to create a patient’s lexicon with the aid of technology to save patients’ terminologies and match them with their correct medical terminologies. It is imperative that followers, employees or students understand what is being said for there to be meaningful reciprocity. As a future administrator of a nursing home, Okun’s message is one that resonates. As a leader, overseer and a provider understanding, the very rudimentary needs of a patient is
Medical terminology is mostly formed from Greek and Latin roots. Terms named for people and are called eponyms. Medical terms can be understood by dissecting them. A root word is used in conjunction with a combining vowel, prefix and/or a suffix to form the term. By learning the meanings of the word parts, most medical terms can be deciphered. Acronyms are often used for common medical terms by using the first letters of each word to create a new word or abbreviation. For example, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, is much better known by its acronym,
In a highly dynamic world, the role of nurses should be studied constantly, and appropriate information technology education programs are to be adopted (Darvish, Bahramnezhad, Keyhanian, & Navidhamidi, 2014). TIGER initiative has a global inter-professional community that can access the framework provided by the Informatics Definitions document via its Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Consequently, a feasible online instrument for self-assessment of competency levels is improved (Hunter, McGonigle, & Hebda, 2013). The Informatics definitions document collaboratively defines and documents core health informatics terminology, and this data is shared among the TIGER community across the globe. Thus, this file is important because it keeps all the nurses aligned across the world, thereby enhancing health service delivery.
Computers not only aid in the administration and organization of patient records, but in actual health care. The Internet has made a huge impact on the health care system. Health care on the Internet has become diverse and significantly present in the past two to three years. Throughout the years, Internet services for health care evolved. According to (Douglass K., 1997), during the first generation, uses of the Internet have been applications of information that describe products, and services that are available from health care providers. During the second generation, the Internet was used for transactions that involved electronic data exchanges, which includes purchasing prescription drugs. As technology advances, the third generation will involve the use of complex health management programs and the managing of clinical information.
It has allowed life to adapt to an easier, faster and diverse environment. Therefore, using technology to create electronic medical records only makes sense to help organize the health care community, which is a separate world itself. Electronic medical record (EMR) software isn't a cure-all that will eliminate errors, but it can help reduce the odds of mistake. EMR’s are a digital version of patient charts which contain the medical and treatment history of the patient. They track data over time, identify which patients are due for preventive screenings or checkups, check how their patients are doing on certain boundaries as well as monitor and improve overall quality of care within the practice. An EMR serves as an assistant in providing some of the fastest, user friendly and error preventing tools to make both patient and staff happy. Doctors can use the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) to order tests, medications, procedures etc. into the system without forgetting any detail specified to dose, route, and frequency. By using this type of order entry, abbreviations and decimal points that are dangerous can now properly be recognized and not confused. Most systems also offer computerized decision support systems (CDSS) which aid in reviewing orders as they appear, comparing orders both past and present, checking for possible drug interactions, as well as alerting physicians to
Healthcare information technologies is a rapidly growing field that has its roots founded in the 1960s when the first computer were developed (Brooke, 2015). This crude computer technology would ultimately pave the way to the creation of the modern day electronic health record. With so any vast abilities of computers and electronic health records currently, the Federal government felt is was necessary to create a position in order to oversee this rapidly growing industry. That is why ins 2004, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technologies (ONC) was founded (HealthIT.Gov, 2016). The ONC is a major role player in the implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH).