Clinical Problem Statement Vocabulary For Medical Records

The Canonical Clinical Problem Statement System (CCPSS) is a knowledge base that represents and codes patients’ clinical problems. It differs from existing medical coding schemes because it is clinically relevant and contains clinical knowledge regarding the complex interrelationships between medical problems. The CCPSS could form the basis for construction of more thorough and accurate electronically accessible problem lists and will permit epidemiologic studies of problems across institutions. Partial funding for development of the CCPSS project was from the National Library of Medicine (NLM). It is one of the source vocabularies incorporated in the UMLS Metathesaurus, a very large, multi-purpose, and multi-lingual vocabulary database that contains information about biomedical and health related concepts, their various names, and the relationships among them. CCPSS is made available via the NLM website to third parties as a knowledge source under the NLM’s Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), for internal research, statistical analysis and development use only. Any other uses, including commercial, require a license from Vanderbilt University.