Internship at ECRI Institute (Plymouth Meeting, PA)

Student members take note: ECRI Institute has an internship opportunity that would be good for a library school student.

ECRI Institute Internship – Universal Medical Device Nomenclature System™ (UMDNS)

Universal Medical Device Nomenclature System™ (UMDNS) is a standard international nomenclature and computer coding system for medical devices. UMDNS is the worldwide nomenclature that has been officially adopted by many nations. It is used in ECRI Institute’s databases and publications, as well as in thousands of healthcare institutions worldwide and in ECRI’s databases and publications. UMDNS is also available in Spanish.

Manage Medical Devices Better
The purpose of UMDNS is to facilitate identifying, processing, filing, storing, retrieving, transferring, and communicating data about medical devices. The nomenclature is used in applications ranging from hospital inventory and work-order controls to national agency medical device regulatory systems and from e-commerce and procurement to medical device databases.

Over 7,500 Terms
UMDNS contains nearly 7,500 unique medical device concepts and definitions (preferred terms), along with an additional 8,000 entry terms to facilite classifying of biomedical information

UMDNS contains explicit relationships among the nearly 15,500 terms, including hierarchical relationships (e.g., parent:child terms) and synonymous relations, as well as relationships among related devices (e.g., component devices versus the overall system).

Endorsed Internationally
Numerous organizations and agencies have endorsed UMDNS for use in various applications.

• The U.S. National Library of Medicine incorporates UMDNS into its Unified Medical Language System (UMLS).
• The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) recommends using ECRI’s UMDNS in its new Manufacturer Disclosure Statement for Medical Device Security (MDS2) form.
• The Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety of the Institute of Medicine recommended UMDNS as one of the core terminologies for the electronic health record.

In addition, the ISO/IEC Registration Authority for the International Standard 15459 has granted ECRI Institute an “Issuing Agency Code” (IAC). ECRI Institute’s IAC can be used with the UMDNS unique medical device code (UMDC) in the creation and use of unique identifiers for medical devices and related supplies for a range of applications, such as asset tracking, acquisitions management and inventory control.

There are many efforts to harmonize UMDNS as part of nomenclature systems worldwide. Specifically, UMDNS was used by the European Union at the recommendation of the European standards body (CEN) as an interim solution for medical device terminology in support of the Medical Device Directive. ECRI Institute and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agreed in 1997 to harmonize both UMDNS and FDA’s device classification system.

Specific goals and deliverables

• Write uniform, concise, and technically sound definitions for new devices.
• Clarify and update the definitions of current terminology according to technological advances.
• Create appropriate medical device terminology.
• Review topics to identify relevant concepts and stakeholders.
• Consider new term in context of existing nomenclature. (Cross-references, Synonyms, Implications for hierarchy and parent/child inheritance)
• Prepare preliminary proposals for technical and nomenclature review.
• Reconcile reviewer comments and prepare conclusion form for data-entry.
• Enter new concepts into Apelon Terminology Development Environment (TDE).
• Map UMDNS concepts to concepts in other vocabularies.

The final project for this course will be a UMDNS proposal and/or conclusion document spanning an entire device category. Categories will be selected based upon the skill sets and experience of individual interns. Potential categories include assistive devices, bandages & dressings, exercisers, and optical measuring instruments.

Requirements: Info622 (content representation), Info648 (healthcare informatics)

Interested candidates should contact:

Eileen Erinoff
Director, Health Technology Assessment Information Center
ECRI Institute Headquarters
5200 Butler Pike
Plymouth Meeting, PA 19462-1298, USA

Tel +1 (610) 825-6000, ext. 5268
Fax +1 (610) 834-1275

E-mail eerinoff@ecri.org
Web www.ecri.org