MD-CTS: An integrated terminology reference of clinical and translational medicine

Will Ray; Joe Finamore; Majid Rastegar-Mojarad; Chris Kadolph; Zhan Ye; Jacquie Bohne; Yin Xu; Dan Burish; Joshua Sondelski; Melissa Easker; Brian Finnegan; Barbara Bartkowiak; Catherine Arnott Smith; Umberto Tachinardi; Eneida A Mendonca; Bryan Weichelt; Simon M Lin

doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2016.02.004

MD-CTS: An integrated terminology reference of clinical and translational medicine

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2016 Mar 2:14:131-4. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2016.02.004. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Will Ray¹, Joe Finamore¹, Majid Rastegar-Mojarad¹, Chris Kadolph¹, Zhan Ye¹, Jacquie Bohne¹, Yin Xu¹, Dan Burish², Joshua Sondelski², Melissa Easker², Brian Finnegan³, Barbara Bartkowiak³, Catherine Arnott Smith⁴, Umberto Tachinardi⁵, Eneida A Mendonca⁵, Bryan Weichelt⁶, Simon M Lin¹

Affiliations

¹ Biomedical Informatics Research Center, Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, Marshfield, WI, USA.
² Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, WI, USA.
³ George E. Magnin Medical Library, Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, WI, USA.
⁴ School of Library and Information Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.
⁵ School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA.
⁶ National Farm Medicine Center, Marshfield Clinic Research Foundation, Marshfield, WI, USA.

Abstract

New vocabularies are rapidly evolving in the literature relative to the practice of clinical medicine and translational research. To provide integrated access to new terms, we developed a mobile and desktop online reference-Marshfield Dictionary of Clinical and Translational Science (MD-CTS). It is the first public resource that comprehensively integrates Wiktionary (word definition), BioPortal (ontology), Wiki (image reference), and Medline abstract (word usage) information. MD-CTS is accessible at http://spellchecker.mfldclin.edu/. The website provides a broadened capacity for the wider clinical and translational science community to keep pace with newly emerging scientific vocabulary. An initial evaluation using 63 randomly selected biomedical words suggests that online references generally provided better coverage (73%-95%) than paper-based dictionaries (57-71%).

Keywords: Database; Dictionary; Medicine; Software.

Grants and funding

UL1 TR000427/TR/NCATS NIH HHS/United States