Diseases Database
Encyclopedia
The Diseases Database is a database that underlies a free website
that provides information about the relationships between medical conditions, symptoms, and medications. The database is run by Medical Object Oriented Software Enterprises Ltd, a small company based in London
, UK.
The site's stated aim is "education, background reading and general interest" with an intended audience "physicians, other clinical healthcare workers and students of these professions". The editor of the site is stated as Malcolm H Duncan, a UK qualified medical doctor.
There are around 8,000 items within the database.
In order to link items to both each other and external information resources three sets of metadata are modelled within the database.
Firstly Diseases Database items are assigned various relationships e.g. diabetes mellitus type 2
is asserted "a risk factor for" ischaemic heart disease
. More formally the database employs an entity-attribute-value model
with items populating both entity and value slots.
Relationships may be read in either direction e.g. the assertion "myocardial infarction {may cause} chest pain" has the corollary "chest pain {may be caused by} myocardial infarction". Such relationships aggregate within the
database and allow lists to be retrieved - e.g. a list of items which may cause chest pain, and a list of items which may be caused by myocardial infarction.
Secondly most Diseases Database items are assigned topic specific hyperlinks to Web resources which include Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, eMedicine
and WikiPedia.
Thirdly most Diseases Database items are mapped to concepts within the Unified Medical Language System
(UMLS). UMLS links enable the display of short text definitions and/or Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) scope notes for the majority of items on the database.
The UMLS map also enables links to and from other medical classifications and terminologies e.g. ICD-9 and SNOMED.
Diseases Database content can thus potentially be accessed directly via coded identifiers from multiple medical coding systems e.g. the SNOMED concept code for Myocardial infarction 22298006 finds the equivalent
Diseases Database item http://www.diseasesdatabase.com/code_translate.asp?strCODE=22298006&strSAB=SNOMEDCT as well as a number of other closely related concepts via UMLS supplied relationships.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
that provides information about the relationships between medical conditions, symptoms, and medications. The database is run by Medical Object Oriented Software Enterprises Ltd, a small company based in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, UK.
The site's stated aim is "education, background reading and general interest" with an intended audience "physicians, other clinical healthcare workers and students of these professions". The editor of the site is stated as Malcolm H Duncan, a UK qualified medical doctor.
Organization
The Diseases Database is based around a collection of concepts related to human medicine. These concepts include diseases, drugs, symptoms, physical signs and abnormal laboratory results. These are referred to as 'items'.There are around 8,000 items within the database.
In order to link items to both each other and external information resources three sets of metadata are modelled within the database.
Firstly Diseases Database items are assigned various relationships e.g. diabetes mellitus type 2
Diabetes mellitus type 2
Diabetes mellitus type 2formerly non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus or adult-onset diabetesis a metabolic disorder that is characterized by high blood glucose in the context of insulin resistance and relative insulin deficiency. Diabetes is often initially managed by increasing exercise and...
is asserted "a risk factor for" ischaemic heart disease
Ischaemic heart disease
Ischaemic or ischemic heart disease , or myocardial ischaemia, is a disease characterized by ischaemia of the heart muscle, usually due to coronary artery disease...
. More formally the database employs an entity-attribute-value model
Entity-Attribute-Value model
Entity–attribute–value model is a data model to describe entities where the number of attributes that can be used to describe them is potentially vast, but the number that will actually apply to a given entity is relatively modest. In mathematics, this model is known as a sparse matrix...
with items populating both entity and value slots.
Relationships may be read in either direction e.g. the assertion "myocardial infarction {may cause} chest pain" has the corollary "chest pain {may be caused by} myocardial infarction". Such relationships aggregate within the
database and allow lists to be retrieved - e.g. a list of items which may cause chest pain, and a list of items which may be caused by myocardial infarction.
Secondly most Diseases Database items are assigned topic specific hyperlinks to Web resources which include Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, eMedicine
EMedicine
eMedicine is an online clinical medical knowledge base that was founded in 1996 by Scott Plantz and Richard Lavely, two medical doctors. The website is searchable by keyword and consists of approximately 6,800 articles, each of which is associated with one of 62 clinical subspecialty textbooks...
and WikiPedia.
Thirdly most Diseases Database items are mapped to concepts within the Unified Medical Language System
Unified Medical Language System
The Unified Medical Language System is a compendium of many controlled vocabularies in the biomedical sciences . It provides a mapping structure among these vocabularies and thus allows one to translate among the various terminology systems; it may also be viewed as a comprehensive thesaurus and...
(UMLS). UMLS links enable the display of short text definitions and/or Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) scope notes for the majority of items on the database.
The UMLS map also enables links to and from other medical classifications and terminologies e.g. ICD-9 and SNOMED.
Diseases Database content can thus potentially be accessed directly via coded identifiers from multiple medical coding systems e.g. the SNOMED concept code for Myocardial infarction 22298006 finds the equivalent
Diseases Database item http://www.diseasesdatabase.com/code_translate.asp?strCODE=22298006&strSAB=SNOMEDCT as well as a number of other closely related concepts via UMLS supplied relationships.