Indexing of Medical Data with UMLS
Employed a trial with Johns Hopkins Univ, Univ Colorado, Univ Michigan, Univ Pitt and NLM
8 indexers used the WWW interface to index 30 images
Results employing 1996 UMLS version
- An average of 11.9 indexing terms were entered per indexer for each image, for a total of 784 terms
- 38% (300 terms) were found in the 1996 version of the Metathesaurus and produced valid indexing output
- value ranged from 22 % found to 81 % found, with a median of 38 % found, so there was a broad variation among indexers
- generally the more terms employed by an indexer the lower % found
- no indication in this study that the indexers were influenced while indexing images at the end of the test set vs output from earlier images
Conclusion - not very satisfactory indexing (only 38% avg.)