The Use of the UMLS Knowledge Sources for the Design of a Domain Specific Ontology: A Practical Experience in Blood Transfusion

In highly evolutive medical domains, decision support systems have to easily be modifiable by medical experts themselves. In the field of blood transfusion, the evolution of medical knowledge and governmental regulation impose a continuous adaptation of decision support systems. Explicit domain ontologies is then a prerequisite for the construction of such extensible systems. We have chosen to base our domain ontology representation on the entities and relations present in the UMLS knowledge sources. In this paper we detail, how in using a specific browser, we have exploited, reused and extended UMLS entities and relations to design a domain specific ontology for blood transfusion.