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A -- ENHANCED ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE SOURCES FOR UMLS SOL NLM 00-209/LTN POC Liem T. Nguyen, Contract Specialist, 301-496-6546 E-MAIL: click here to contact the contract specialist via, liem_nguyen@nlm.nih.gov. It is the intent of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to negotiate on a sole source basis with the University of Washington under authority 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1) and FAR 6.302-1 for "Enhanced Anatomical Knowledge Sources for UMLS." The Contractor will be required to add anatomical knowledge to the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) being developed by NLM. The UMLS supports applications that help professionals and researchers retrieve and integrate electronic biomedical information from a variety of sources, such as computer-based patient records, bibliographic databases, factual databases, and expert systems. Underpinning the UMLS are online "knowledge sources" that can be used by a range of programs to overcome retrieval problems caused by differences in terminology and the scattering of relevant information across many databases. The focus of this procurement is the extension of existing anatomical knowledge in the UMLS to two additional levels, namely microscopic anatomy and anatomical variants. The University of Washington shall provide all information in machine-readable form fully compatible with existing UMLS data. The deliverables will be both integrated into the Metathesaurus and represented by a hierarchy of semantic types in the Semantic Network. The Metathesaurus is a knowledge source developed and distributed by NLM that contains information about biomedical concepts and terms from a number of controlled vocabularies used in patient records and administrative health data as well as bibliographic and full-text databases. The Semantic Network stipulates allowable relations between constituent concepts in the Metathesaurus. Dr. Cornelius Rosse, an eminent anatomist at the University of Washington, and his associates have devised an ontology of canonical, macroscopic anatomy that is based on a set of principles which distinguishes their work from other symbolic representations of anatomy in several important respects. Their ontology is based on an anatomical (rather than clinical) viewpoint, and models the physical (rather than functional) organization of the body. The notion of "Organ" as the basic unit of macroscopic anatomy naturally supports the articulation of a knowledge base which models the physical entities constituting the body and the relationships which exist among them. In completed work already incorporated into the UMLS, Dr. Rosse and his associates have instantiated this model with more than 50,000 terms describing the anatomical entities visible to the naked eye (macroscopic anatomy), which constitute the idealized human body (canonical anatomy). The current need is to extend this work to microscopic anatomy (histology) and anatomical variants. In any coherent representation of anatomical knowledge, macroscopic and canonical anatomy form the core axes, in terms of which histology and variants can be modeled and comprehended. It is therefore crucial that the microscopic and variant information be formulated in concordance with the principles that support the canonical, macroscopic data already in the UMLS. Dr. Rosse and his associates at the University of Washington represent the only provider who can fulfill this need. Any other source would have to duplicate the earlier work of the University of Washington at considerable cost and delay to the Government. NLM anticipates awarding a cost-reimbursement contract with a period of performance of September 30, 2000 through September 29, 2001, with a one (1) year option. This notice of intent is not a Request for Proposals (RFP) nor is an RFP available. Telephone/Fax requests will not be honored. All responsible sources may submit a proposal which will be considered by NLM. See numbered Note 22 and 26. Posted 04/05/00 (W-SN441702). (0096)

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