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EVS Explore—New Browser Offers Faster Searches for Standardized Cancer Data Terms

Cancer researchers and others interested in finding standardized cancer data terminology now have a faster tool for searching the NCI Thesaurus (NCIt).

NCI’s Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS) has released a new browser, called EVS Explore, which builds on the existing functionality offered by the EVS Application Programming Interface.

EVS Explore offers robust term-searching capability, enabling cancer researchers to quickly retrieve and display concept details, such as definitions, synonyms, relationships and mappings, as well as a hierarchical display. The new browser even features an internal “clock” to show how quickly those results were found. For example, a quick search of “pancreatic” returned 727 concepts in 363 milliseconds.

Dr. Lyubov Remennik, EVS Program Manager and expert in cancer research ontologies, notes that, “Feedback on the new browser has been very positive, with people reporting that EVS Explore is much faster than the previous version. By making the search for standardized terms faster, we hope to make it even easier to integrate and share data.”

She added, “This new browser won’t be replacing the old one. Researchers can still access the legacy browser (EVS Term Browser), and it will remain in place until additional functionality is built into the EVS Explore.”

For more information, visit EVS Explore.

"Screenshot of the EVS Explore Portal. Top left is the NCI EVS Explore portal logo. Below the portal logo is a search bar and ""Search"" button. 3 radio buttons are underneath the search bar and are labelled, ""Contains', 'Exact Match"" and ""Starts With"". Beside the radio buttos are two drop down menus with multiple options to select from. The top right has three navigation tabs labelled: ""Hierarchy,"" ""Documentation,"" and ""Help"". The center of the graphic has a title, ""Welcome"". Below that is a text thatreads: ""NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) provides reference terminology for many NCI and other systems. It covers vocabulary for clinical care, translational and basic research, and public information and administrative activities."" Below is a sub-ttle text, ""NCIt features"" with the following line bullet texts;
""Stable, unique codes for biomedical concepts.""
""Preferred terms, synonyms, research codes, external source codes, and other information.""
""Over 100,000 textual definitions.
""Over 400,000 cross-links between concepts, providing formal logic-based definition of many concepts.""
""Extensive content integrated from NCI and other partners, much available as separate NCIt subsets.""
""Updated frequently by a team of subject matter experts.""
 Below  that is is text that reads, ""NCIt is a widely recognized standard for biomedical coding and reference, used by a broad variety of public and private partners both nationally and internationally including the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium Terminology (CDISC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Medication Terminologies (FMT), and the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP).""

On the right side of the welcome message are two navigation buttons. The first navigation button on top has a label, ""EVS"", with a side text that reads; ""NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services: Terminology resources and services for NCI and the biomedical community."" The ""NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services"" text is a clickable link. The second navigation button below has a label, ""Cancer.gov"", with a side text that reads; NCI Terminology Resources: More information on NCI dictionaries and resources."". The ""NCI Terminology Resources"" text is a clickable link."

Screenshot depicting the new EVS Explore search box.

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