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Using the UMLS to represent medical curriculum content
1Office of Medical Education, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, PA.
Proceedings. Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care
|January 1, 1993
Summary
Medical schools need to update curricula. This study presents a new method using the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) to analyze medical concepts, improving curriculum content by identifying gaps and redundancies.
Area of Science:
- Medical Education
- Medical Informatics
Background:
- Medical education innovation requires regular curriculum review to detect omissions, redundancies, and integrate new content.
- Current methods using keyword databases face challenges in achieving these curriculum revision goals.
Purpose of the Study:
- To outline an alternative method for characterizing medical concepts within a curriculum.
- To facilitate the detection of omissions and redundancies in medical education content.
Main Methods:
- Utilizes the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) resources.
- Characterizes medical concepts based on the semantic types of co-occurring terms.
Main Results:
- The proposed UMLS-based approach offers a systematic way to analyze curricular content.
- This method can aid in identifying areas for content addition, integration, or deletion.
Conclusions:
- The UMLS semantic type approach provides a robust alternative to keyword-based methods for curriculum analysis.
- This facilitates more effective and efficient medical curriculum development and maintenance.