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About

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EVS

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This is the wiki home page for the EVS tools and program. EVS developers may edit these pages and any user may add a comment. This wiki has technical and product information for EVS as follows.

About EVS

Information about migrating can also be found on these wiki pages:

• LexEVS 5.x Migration Guide
• LexEVS 6.0 Migration Guide

NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) provides controlled vocabulary that is the semantic base for caCORE, and caBIG® tools and collaborations as well as Semantic Infrastructure. EVS is a project of the National Cancer Institute Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (NCI CBIIT). EVS activities include terminology development; terminology licensing; software development and licensing; and operations support. Projects center on development and maintenance of vocabulary and servers.

Vocabulary Projects

EVS develops and provides operations support for two broadly used vocabulary sources for cancer research: the NCI Thesaurus (NCIt), a cancer-focused terminology, and the NCI Metathesaurus (NCIm), a mapping of concepts to terms in multiple vocabularies.

EVS has also developed tools to support collaborative community-based ontology development including NCI Protégé, and develops and maintains the NCI Term Browser.

In addition, EVS licenses and serves third party terminology as needed to meet NCI and caBIG® requirements. From its beginning, EVS has sought to address the broad spectrum of terminology needs at NCI.

Vocabulary Servers and APIs

LexEVS 6.0 is the current release of EVS Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS). For detailed information about the current release and earlier releases refer to the LexEVS Wiki.

The underlying software code, object model, use cases, and user documentation are available for use under an open-source license. Developers are encouraged visit the EVS download page for the relevant files and licensing information.

Availability of earlier releases

Files from caCORE EVS version 5.x and earlier are made available for download from the EVS Archives. Note that the 4.x and 5.x license terms still apply.

Quick Links

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Since 1997, NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) has provided terminology content, tools, and services to accurately code, analyze and share cancer and biomedical research, clinical care, and public health information. EVS works with many partners to develop, license and publish terminology, jointly develop software tools, and support harmonization and shared standards. EVS provides the foundational layer for NCI's informatics infrastructure, and plays an important role in federal and international standards efforts (see EVS Use and Collaborations).

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EVS Terminology

EVS creates, compiles, and cross-maps biomedical terminology needed by NCI and its community. EVS publishes NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) as its core reference terminology and biomedical ontology, as well as NCI Metathesaurus (NCIm), which provides cross-mappings to more than 110 terminologies.  EVS also makes available standalone versions of other terminologies and ontologies, as well as many specialized mappings and value sets.

• NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) is NCI's reference terminology and core biomedical ontology, covering  key biomedical concepts with a rich set of terms, codes, textual definitions, and inter-concept relationships. NCIt combined and extended core NCI terminologies within a scientifically and technically rigorous framework. NCIt is now a broadly shared coding and semantic infrastructure resource – over half of NCIt concepts include content explicitly tagged by one or more EVS partners (for additional information including detailed statistics see the shared terminology development wiki page ).
• NCI Metathesaurus (NCIm)  provides a broad, concept-based representation of terms from over 110 biomedical terminologies, representing their shared meanings. NCIm contains most terminologies used by NCI for clinical care, translational and basic research, and provides a rich source of definitions, synonyms, codes, and other information. NCIm starts from a subset of NLM's UMLS Metathesaurus, and modifies and extends it with many additional sources.
• Other Terminologies : EVS licenses, processes and makes available individually through EVS systems, many other terminologies of special interest to NCI and the research community. EVS has helped create, harmonize with, and publish several of these terminologies.  NCI EVS Explore hosts terminologies an integrated environment, providing search, cross-links, and a user friendly interface to ICD-10-CM, CTCAE, MedDRA, SNOMED CT, MED-RT, GO, and many other terminologies and ontologies used by NCI and its partners.
• Terminology Mappings: Pairwise mappings between several supported terminologies have also been created and published to support data translation and cross-reference. As with standalone terminologies above, such mappings generally reflect special EVS community interests and collaborations.
• Terminology Subsets, Value Sets and Data Standards: EVS works with many partners to create and support standardized terminology for biomedical coding.  Hundreds of NCIt subsets and other code lists are maintained by EVS.   Key EVS supported terminology standards include:

• FDA Terminology : EVS is working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to develop and support controlled terminology in several areas. More than 25,000 FDA terms and codes are stored in NCIt.
  

• CDISC Terminology : The Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) -- an international, non-profit organization that develops and supports global data standards for medical research -- has chosen EVS as its terminology partner.

• NCPDP Terminology : The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) creates and promotes the transfer of data related to medications, supplies, and services through the development of standards and industry guidance, and now uses NCIt in two of its standards.

• Pediatric Terminology : The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and EVS are working with numerous contributors from national and international academic, clinical and research institutions to provide standardized terminology for coding pediatric clinical trials and other research activities.

Making these terminology resources more easily available, mapping between them, harmonizing coding standards, and promoting agreement on best practices, are all core EVS priorities.

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Documentation

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