NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS)
NCI Dictionaries
Federal Medication Terminologies
FDA Terminology
CDISC Terminology
NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS)
Terminology plays an important role in NCI's research, clinical, and information efforts. NCI is working with many partners to create and publish controlled terminology that can help develop and communicate information useful to scientists, clinicians, patients, and the public. Here are some key resources.
NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) 1
EVS is a collaborative effort of the NCI Office of Communications 2 and the NCI Center for Bioinformatics 3. The EVS provides a set of services and resources, including NCI Thesaurus and NCI Metathesaurus, that facilitate the standardization of terminology across the Institute and the larger biomedical community.
NCI Thesaurus 4
Published monthly by NCI, this reference terminology and biomedical ontology is used in a growing number of NCI and other systems. It covers vocabulary for clinical care, translational and basic research, and public information and administrative activities. The NCI Thesaurus provides definitions, synonyms, and other information on nearly 10,000 cancers and related diseases, 8,000 single agents and combination therapies, and a wide range of other topics related to cancer and biomedical research. It is maintained by a multidisciplinary team of editors, who add about 900 new entries each month.
NCI Metathesaurus 5
The NCI Metathesaurus is a comprehensive biomedical terminology database that contains 1,300,000 concepts mapped to 4,600,000 terms with 17,000,000 relationships. NCI Metathesaurus currently contains most public domain vocabularies from the National Library of Medicine's UMLS Metathesaurus 6, as well as a growing number of other cancer-related vocabularies.
NCI Terminology Browser 4
The Web browser used for NCI Thesaurus also provides access to the Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA), the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), the Gene Ontology (GO), and other terminologies used by NCI and its partners.
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NCI Dictionaries
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NCI Dictionary of Cancer Terms 7
A dictionary of about 5,000 cancer and biomedical terms, defined in non-technical language. Terms and definitions are reviewed by a multidisciplinary panel of reviewers, and approximately 50 new and 50 revised terms are included each month. The dictionary is available as a stand-alone resource on every Cancer.gov Web page, and individual terms in many Web documents are also directly linked to their dictionary definitions. The dictionary is also widely used by other institutions and Web sites.
NCI Dictionary of Genetics Terms 8
A dictionary of more than 100 genetics-related terms written for healthcare professionals. This resource was developed to support the comprehensive, evidence-based, peer-reviewed PDQ cancer genetics information summaries 9.
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NCI Drug Dictionary 10
A dictionary that contains technical definitions, alternate names, and links to related information for more than 1,200 agents that are being used in the treatment of patients with cancer or cancer-related conditions. Each entry includes a link to a more detailed entry in the NCI Thesaurus, which provides the information presented, as well as links to open and closed clinical trials in NCI's PDQ® Cancer Clinical Trials Registry.
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Federal Medication Terminologies
The Federal Medication (FedMed) interagency collaboration is organizing an agreed set
of standard, comprehensive, freely and easily accessible Federal
Medication Terminologies (FMT) to improve the exchange and public
availability of medication information. FedMed is a joint effort of these
Federal partner agencies:
The FedMed resources and related standards encompass medication and
ingredient names, codes, routes of administration, dosage forms, units of
presentation, mechanisms of action, physiologic effects, and structure.
Participating agencies currently provide the following FMT components and
related products:
The initial FMT terminology set has been endorsed by U.S. Federal standards efforts including the
National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS),
Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI),
the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP),
and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
within the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS). An overview of the FMT goals, directions, and components is available
in a jointly developed
PowerPoint presentation 29.
The FedMed partners are working with
ONC to develop an Interagency Coordination Group that can support
coordination, development, and use of the FMT standards.
Please send questions and support requests to:
FedMedHelp@hhs.gov
FDA Terminology
The FDA is working with EVS to develop and support controlled terminology in several areas.
More than 10,000 FDA terms and codes are stored in NCI Thesaurus (NCIt).
This and other terminology used by FDA is updated and made available for download from an
NCI File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site 30.
Listings of all FDA subsets in NCIt are available in
tab-delimited text 31,
Excel spreadsheet 32, and
zip-compressed Excel 33
formats. Relevant subsets are also available in each of these four main areas:
Structured Product Labeling (SPL) 34
is a document markup standard approved by Health Level Seven (HL7) 35,
an international medical standards organization,
and used by FDA to exchange medication information. The SPL standard specifies use of some 30 sets
of controlled terminology. The NCI FTP site provides these SPL resources:
NCIt SPL Subsets 36:
Eleven sets of SPL terminology are maintained in NCIt and available for download in
Excel 37 or
text 38
formats. SPL represents countries with ISO 3166-1 Alpha-3 country codes, extracted from NCIt in separate
Excel 39 and
text 40
files.
NDF-RT SPL Subsets 41:
The VHA National Drug File Reference Terminology (NDF-RT)
maintains terminology used to code these medication properties:
Problem List Subset 48:
The Medical Condition component of SPL is coded with the VHA and Kaiser
Permanente (VA/KP) Problem List Subset of the
Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT). This set of SNOMED terms and codes is
freely reusable worldwide without licensing or intellectual property restrictions. It is
available in
Excel 49,
zipped Excel 50, and
text 51
formats, as well as through a specialized
browser application 52.
Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII) 19
codes are being developed by FDA to uniquely
identify all ingredients used in marketed medications in the United States. Each UNII is
assigned based on molecular structure, manufacturing process, or other characteristics. FDA provides
a full set of published UNII codes 53
on its Web site. These codes are also being included in corresponding NCI Thesaurus concepts,
and files providing UNIIs with matching NCI concept codes are available for download in
Excel 54 and
text 55
formats.
Individual Case Safety Report (ICSR) terminology is used to encode adverse event
information for reporting purposes. Fifteen ICSR term sets are maintained in NCI Thesaurus,
and are available for download in
Excel 56 and
text 57
formats.
Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) 58
terminology is under development to encode reporting of medical device problems. Three CDRH term sets,
covering Patient Problem Codes, Device Component Codes, and Device Problem Codes,
are maintained in NCIt and available for download in
Excel 59 and
text 60
formats.
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CDISC Terminology
The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) 61 is an international, non-profit organization that develops and supports global data standards for medical research. CDISC is working actively with EVS to develop and support controlled terminology in several areas, notably CDISC's Study Data Tabulation Model (SDTM). SDTM is an international standard for clinical research data, and is approved by the FDA as a standard electronic submission format.
CDISC SDTM and other terminology goes through an extensive process of definition, development, and review before it is
declared ready for release. Terminology that has completed this process is tagged as "Production," and now includes some
50 SDTM codelists with about 2,200 terms covering demographics, interventions, findings, events, trial
design, units, frequency, and ECG terminology. This terminology is maintained and distributed as part of NCI Thesaurus,
and is available for direct download from the
CDISC SDTM directory 62
on an NCI File Transfer Protocol (FTP) site in both
Excel 63 and
text 64 formats.
CDISC also leads the Clinical Data Acquisition Standards Harmonization (CDASH) project,
which develops clinical research study content standards in collaboration with
sixteen partner organizations including NCI. NCI EVS maintains and distributes CDASH controlled
terminology as part of NCI Thesaurus. More information is available at CDISC's
CDASH Web page 65.
The CDISC New Term Request 66
web page handles suggestions for both new terminology and changes to existing terminology.
The CDISC Term Request Tracking 67
web page helps members of the CDISC community review and comment on all submitted requests.
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