title: Standardized mappings--a framework to combine different semantic mappers into a standardized web-API.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Automatic coding of medical terms is an important, but highly complicated and laborious task.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To compare and evaluate different strategies a framework with a standardized web-interface was created. Two UMLS mapping strategies are compared to demonstrate the interface.
  
  
  METHODS
  The framework is a Java Spring application running on a Tomcat application server. It accepts different parameters and returns results in JSON format. To demonstrate the framework, a list of medical data items was mapped by two different methods: similarity search in a large table of terminology codes versus search in a manually curated repository. These mappings were reviewed by a specialist.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The evaluation shows that the framework is flexible (due to standardized interfaces like HTTP and JSON), performant and reliable. Accuracy of automatically assigned codes is limited (up to 40%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Combining different semantic mappers into a standardized Web-API is feasible. This framework can be easily enhanced due to its modular design.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Informatics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Neuhaus
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Informatics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Justin
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Doods
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Informatics, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dugas
mesh_terms: D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000592:standards*; D005858:Germany; D020407:Internet / Q000592:standards; D008498:Medical Record Linkage / Q000592:standards; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated / Q000592:standards; D012660:Semantics; D012984:Software / Q000592:standards*; D009626:Terminology as Topic; D017432:Unified Medical Language System / Q000592:standards*