Patent ID: 7672987
Filing Date: 2010-03-02
Classification: G16H

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method for integrating medical information using the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) as a hierarchical tree-structured taxonomy of medical terms, comprising the steps of: providing a source ontology and a target ontology, said ontologies comprising formalizations of domain concepts associated with a medical terminological vocabulary, each concept being associated with data, each said ontology being distinct from the UMLS; learning concept classifiers for said source and target ontologies from training data; forming associations that map elements between the source and target ontology using the UMLS and said concept classifiers, wherein associated source ontology elements and target ontology elements are mapped to a same UMLS concept, wherein forming associations comprises the steps of: ranking said associations in terms of a number of source and target concepts to which each UMLS concept is mapped; and presenting a predefined number of highest ranked associations to a user, wherein the steps of providing a source ontology and a target ontology, learning concept classifiers, forming associations, ranking said associations, and presenting associations to a user, are performed by a computer processor.