Open Standards

    Open Web and open medical standards allow convenient links to SimulConsult's content.  This allows users to bookmark information and allows developers of medical software to create links to our content.  SimulConsult has 2 types of content: 

• Decision support software, available at this time only to Medical Professionals (password required), using links of the form http://www.SimulConsult.com/neurologicalsyndromes/contributor/
• Resources Pages describing diseases and findings, available to both Medical Professionals and Consumers (no password needed), using links of the form http://www.SimulConsult.com/resources/c0221355.html.    The alphanumeric code is the Open Standard of the US National Library of Medicine Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Concept Codes for diseases and findings.  In the example here, the page about a head being excessively large (macrocephaly) is coded using the UMLS code for Macrocephaly (c0221355).  Such Resource Pages are also indexed at http://www.SimulConsult.com/resources/.

    SimulConsult also uses open standards for conveying information about age, gender and findings (symptoms, physical findings and lab test results).  This allows developers of medical software to create links from other software such as Electronic Medical Records to query the Decision Support Software or the Resources Pages to include the following type of information:

• Age:  This is encoded by adding days=somenumber to the query string in the form http://www.SimulConsult.com/resources/c0221355.html?days=243.
• Gender:  This is encoded by adding gender=male or gender=female to the query string in the form http://www.SimulConsult.com/resources/c0221355.html?gender=male.  
• Finding:  Findings are encoded using their National Library of Medicine Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Concept Codes in the form http://www.SimulConsult.com/neurologicalsyndromes/run/index.html?umls=c0221355
• Finding onset age: This is encoded by adding onsetdays=somenumber to the query string with a finding in the form http://www.SimulConsult.com/neurologicalsyndromes/run/index.html?umls=c0221355&onsetdays=182

    These Open Standards for specifying age, gender and findings can be combined.  For example, a medical software developer can link an Electronic Medical Record to SimulConsult's Macrocephaly page customized for an 8 month old boy using:  http://www.SimulConsult.com/resources/c0221355.html?gender=male&days=243 or jump into SimulConsult's Neurological Syndromes module for an 8 month old boy with Kyphosis since 6 months old using: http://www.SimulConsult.com/neurologicalsyndromes/run/index.html?daysold=243&gender=male&umls=c0022821&onsetdays=182