Mapping data elements to terminological resources for integrating biomedical data sources.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Data integration is a crucial task in the biomedical domain and integrating data sources is one approach to integrating data. Data elements (DEs) in particular play an important role in data integration. We combine schema- and instance-based approaches to mapping DEs to terminological resources in order to facilitate data sources integration.

Methods

We extracted DEs from eleven disparate biomedical sources. We compared these DEs to concepts and/or terms in biomedical controlled vocabularies and to reference DEs. We also exploited DE values to disambiguate underspecified DEs and to identify additional mappings.

Results

82.5% of the 474 DEs studied are mapped to entries of a terminological resource and 74.7% of the whole set can be associated with reference

SUBMITTER: Mougin F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1764450 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature