MedlinePlus Connect–The National Library of Medicine And NIH Connects Their Information to Electronic Health Records

The National Library of Medicine makes MedlinePlus Connect available to you at no cost and does not require registration or licensing. This is a nice “free offering” from the government and when connecting with and electronic medical records program as a physician you can be assured where the information is coming from and I think the National Library of Medicine is more than credible here.

Adding some SNOMED here is a big help as we are going from around 33k for a round number to massive codes available. SNOMED is the goal to where we will all be one day here in the US and international. There are commercial companies that one would have to pay for this type of service so why not use the National Library of Medicine so everyone is on the same page, it makes sense to me and it can keep the cost of a medical records program a little lower too if not having to pay an outside vendor for this but you still could if you wanted to include more than one source.

This is pretty nice as you can choose what format you want to use, interactive or to just watch the instructional information or have a pdf that you can use to print out.

I decided to read up on acne here for an example.

The sound is not bad and sounds a bit like old Microsoft Sam but it does the job is not bad at all. We are all getting used to computer speech technologies today anyway. Bike packs and helmets I learned can contribute to acne, <grin> it covers all of it.

Even without being directed by a physician you can still visit the site and get all the information you want as a patient but having the connection and not having to look it up via a medical records system would be nice.

The “geek” page with the API and other information is located here, so if you are just a patient or non Health IT person, you can skip this part as the technologists do this part to make it happen for physicians and medical record vendors. BD

MedlinePlus Connect is a free service of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This service allows any electronic health record (EHR) system to easily link users to MedlinePlus, an authoritative up-to-date health information resource for patients, families and health care providers. MedlinePlus provides information about conditions and disorders, medications, and health and wellness.

MedlinePlus has hundreds of health topic pages that bring together information from the National Institutes of Health, other U.S. government agencies and authoritative health information providers. NLM maintains these collections of information on a daily basis, adding the latest health information and removing broken links. Health topic pages include key resources to inform patients about their health: overview information labeled "Start Here", information on symptoms, treatment, recent news, clinical trials, and much more. You can browse the list of all health topics.

How it Works

MedlinePlus Connect accepts requests for information on diagnoses (problem codes) and medications. NLM has mapped MedlinePlus health topics to two standard diagnostic coding systems used in EHRs. When your EHR submits a request to MedlinePlus Connect, the service returns the closest matching health topic(s) as a response.

For problem code requests, MedlinePlus Connect supports:

ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases, 9th edition, Clinical Modification)

SNOMED CT CORE Problem List Subset (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine, Clinical Terms, CORE Problem List Subset)

MedlinePlus Connect can also link your EHR system to drug information written especially for patients. EHR systems can send MedlinePlus Connect a request for a medication code, and the service will return link(s) to the most appropriate drug information. MedlinePlus drug information is the AHFS Consumer Medication Information and is licensed for use on MedlinePlus from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, ASHP, Inc.

For medication requests, MedlinePlus Connect supports:

RXCUI (RxNorm Concept Unique Identifier)

NDC (National Drug Code)

MedlinePlus Connect currently supports requests for drug information in English only. MedlinePlus Connect is intended for use within the United States health care system and cannot support coding systems not used in the United States.