UMLS Enhanced VA/KP Problem List Subset of SNOMED CT

The Veterans Health Administration and Kaiser Permanente (VA/KP) Problem List Subset of SNOMED CT (PLS) is one of the controlled terminologies used for Structured Product Label (SPL). SPL is a document markup standard approved by Health Level Seven (HL7) and adopted by FDA as a mechanism for exchanging medication information. This set of SNOMED CT terms and codes is freely reusable worldwide without licensing or intellectual property restrictions. The subset is available for download on the NCI's EVS public ftp site: ftp://ftp1.nci.nih.gov/pub/cacore/EVS/FDA.

We have created 2 UMLS subsets with UMLS concepts containing the active SNOMED CT concepts in the PLS. The first subset includes content from SNOMED CT and other source vocabularies with no additional licensing restrictions. The second subset contains, in addition to everything in the first subset, content from MedDRA which requires additional licensing to use. All non-English, obsolete and suppressible content is excluded. All SNOMED CT content outside the PLS is excluded.

The purpose of the UMLS subsets is to facilitate users of the PLS to make use of resources available in the UMLS. One possible use of the subsets is to find synonyms for SNOMED concepts in the PLS. Another possible use is to generate mappings from SNOMED concepts to other standard terminologies (e.g. ICD9CM, MeSH, and MedDRA). Users should always refer to the original PLS as the authentic source. The UMLS subsets are not intended to be an alternative source of the PLS and should always be used in conjunction with the latter.

The two UMLS subsets are available as Content Views in the UMLS (starting from 2008AA). There are two ways to access them. The first way is to apply the ContentView Filter while running MetamorphoSys (under File > Enable/Disable Filter > ContentView Filter) and create a subset containing just the Content View(s). The second way is to make use of the CVF (Content View Flag) field in the RRF files if you have already created a UMLS subset. Most RRF files have the CVF field to denote Content View membership. The CVF is a string of bits with each bit representing one Content View. The bit-string is converted into a number for display. For example, to find all the rows in MRCONSO belonging to the 'UMLS enhanced VA/KP Subset of SNOMED (Level 0 + SNOMED)', one can use this SQL statement:

      SELECT * FROM MRCONSO WHERE BITAND(CVF, 512) <> 0;

512 is the CV_CODE for this Content View. To find this code, first locate the UMLS concept in MRCONSO that represents this Content View (C1964027) by browsing through the available Content Views:

      SELECT * FROM MRCONSO WHERE TTY='CV';

Through this UMLS concept, one can locate the CV_CODE and other metadata about this Content View in MRSAT by:

      SELECT ATN, ATV FROM MRSAT WHERE CUI='C1964027';

If you need assistance with accessing these subsets or to provide feedback, please send email to custserv@nlm.nih.gov. Be sure to include your license number.

Last reviewed: 13 July 2008
Last updated: 13 July 2008
First published: 15 December 2006
Metadata| Permanence level: Permanent: Dynamic Content