title: Initializing the VA medication reference terminology using UMLS metathesaurus co-occurrences.
abstract: We developed and evaluated a UMLS Metathesaurus Co-occurrence mining algorithm to connect medications and diseases they may treat. Based on 16 years of co-occurrence data, we created 977 candidate drug-disease pairs for a sample of 100 ingredients (50 commonly prescribed and 50 selected at random). Our evaluation showed that more than 80% of the candidate drug-disease pairs were rated "APPROPRIATE" by physician raters. Additionally, there was a highly significant correlation between the overall frequency of citation and the likelihood that the connection was rated "APPROPRIATE." The drug-disease pairs were used to initialize term definitions in an ongoing effort to build a medication reference terminology for the Veterans Health Administration. Co-occurrence mining is a valuable technique for initializing term definitions in a large-scale reference terminology creation project.
authors.affiliation: University of Utah, USA.
authors.forename: John S
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Carter
authors.forename: Steven H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Brown
authors.forename: Mark S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Erlbaum
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gregg
authors.forename: Peter L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Elkin
authors.forename: Ted
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Speroff
authors.forename: Mark S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Tuttle
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D004358:Drug Therapy; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations / Q000145:classification*; D013358:Subject Headings; D017432:Unified Medical Language System; D014481:United States; D014493:United States Department of Veterans Affairs; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled
chemical_list: D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations