title: Evaluation of a proposed method for representing drug terminology.
abstract: In the absence of a single, standard, multipurpose terminology for representing medications, the HL7 Vocabulary Technical Committee has sought to develop a model for such terms in a way that will provide a unified method for representing them and supporting interoperability among various terminology systems. We evaluated the preliminary model by obtaining terms, represented in our model, from three leading vendors of pharmacy system knowledge bases. A total of 2303 terms were obtained, and 3982 pair-wise comparisons were possible. We found that the components of the term descriptions matched 68-87% of the time and that the overall descriptions matched 53% of the time. The evaluation has identified a number of areas in the model where more rigorous definitions will be needed in order to improve the matching rate. This paper discusses the implications of these results.
authors.affiliation: Columbia University, Department of Medical Informatics, New York, New York, USA.
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Cimino
authors.forename: T J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: McNamara
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Meredith
authors.forename: C A
authors.initials: CA
authors.lastname: Broverman
authors.forename: K C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Eckert
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Moore
authors.forename: D J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Tyree
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003195:Computer Communication Networks / Q000592:standards; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D018511:Systems Integration; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations