Information Science

Unified Medical Language System

A research and development program initiated by the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE to build knowledge sources for the purpose of aiding the development of systems that help health professionals retrieve and integrate biomedical information. The knowledge sources can be used to link disparate information systems to overcome retrieval problems caused by differences in terminology and the scattering of relevant information across many databases. The three knowledge sources are the Metathesaurus, the Semantic Network, and the Specialist Lexicon.

National Library of MedicineMedical Subject Headings2026

Structured Summary

Abstract

A research and development program initiated by the NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE to build knowledge sources for the purpose of aiding the development of systems that help health professionals retrieve and integrate biomedical information. The knowledge sources can be used to link disparate information systems to overcome retrieval problems caused by differences in terminology and the scattering of relevant information across many databases. The three knowledge sources are the Metathesaurus, the Semantic Network, and the Specialist Lexicon.

MeSH Record

Classification

Broader headings

Related Concepts

Knowledge Graph

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MeSH Record

See Also

MeSH Record

Synonyms

2 entry terms
  • UMLS
  • Metathesaurus

MeSH Record

Aspects Covered

11 allowable subheadings

Indexed with the subheadings classification, economics, ethics, history, instrumentation, legislation & jurisprudence, organization & administration, standards, statistics & numerical data, supply & distribution, trends.

MeSH Record

Indexing Annotation

CATALOGER: Use NAF entry

MeSH Record

History Note

92

MeSH Hierarchy

Tree Number

  1. L01w.462w.750.245w.945w.800w

AMA Style

References

  1. National Library of Medicine. Unified Medical Language System. Medical Subject Headings (MeSH). 2026. Unique ID D017432. http://id.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/2026/D017432
  2. Unified Medical Language System. In: Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Medical_Language_System
  3. Unified Medical Language System. In: Wikidata. https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q455338