A UMLS-based method for integrating information databases into an Intranet

The Internet and the World Wide Web provide today end-users with capabilities to access universally to information in various and heterogeneous databases. The biomedical domain benefits from this new technology, specially for information retrieval by searching and browsing various sites. Nevertheless, end-users may be disoriented by specific ways to access information on different servers. In the framework of an Intranet design and development, we present a method for integrating information databases based on knowledge sources of the UMLS. The method provides designers of a Web site with facilities to implement an easy and homogeneous access to information. The pages are built dynamically and displayed according to a style sheet and their content stored in a database during the design phase. The database also describes the links between pages. Moreover, this organization provides administrators with powerful capabilities to manage Web sites.