Sperzel W D, Abarbanel R M, Nelson S J, Erlbaum M S, Sherertz D D, Tuttle M S, Olson N E, Fuller L F
Lexical Technology Incorporated, Alameda, CA.
Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care. 1991:190-3.
The linkage of disparate biomedical databases is an important goal of the Unified Medical Language (UMLS) Project. We conducted an experiment to investigate the feasibility of using UMLS resources to link databases in clinical genetics and molecular biology. References from MIM ("Mendelian Inheritance in Man") were lexically mapped to the equivalent citations in MEDLINE. The MeSH major subject headings by which the citations in a particular MIM entry had been indexed were used to develop a "genetic-disorder-centered view of the world" in Meta-1 (the first official version of the UMLS Metathesaurus). Our hypothesis was that these MeSH subject headings could provide access to a "semantic neighborhood" in Meta-1 that would be relevant to a particular genetic disorder. By browsing in this "semantic neighborhood," a user could select various combinations of terms with which to search MEDLINE through an interface between Meta-1 and Grateful Med. Such searches might retrieve citations that were more recent than those in MIM or that provided useful supplementary information. Since some MEDLINE records contain pointers to entries in GENBANK, information about genetic sequences related to a particular clinical genetic disorder could also be retrieved. This scenario was implemented for a small number of MIM entries, providing a concrete demonstration that linking disparate electronic databases in an important subdomain of biomedicine is relatively straightforward.
不同生物医学数据库的链接是统一医学语言系统（UMLS）项目的一个重要目标。我们进行了一项实验，以研究利用UMLS资源链接临床遗传学和分子生物学数据库的可行性。将《人类孟德尔遗传》（MIM）中的参考文献在词汇上映射到MEDLINE中的等效引文。特定MIM条目中的引文所依据的医学主题词表（MeSH）主要主题词，被用于在Meta-1（UMLS元词表的第一个正式版本）中构建一个“以遗传疾病为中心的世界观”。我们的假设是，这些MeSH主题词能够提供对Meta-1中与特定遗传疾病相关的“语义邻域”的访问。通过浏览这个“语义邻域”，用户可以选择各种术语组合，通过Meta-1与Grateful Med之间的接口在MEDLINE中进行搜索。这样的搜索可能会检索到比MIM中更新的引文，或者提供有用的补充信息。由于一些MEDLINE记录包含指向基因库（GENBANK）条目的指针，与特定临床遗传疾病相关的基因序列信息也能够被检索到。针对少数MIM条目实现了这种方案，具体证明了在生物医学的一个重要子领域中链接不同的电子数据库相对简单。
