Health Sciences Descriptors
DeCS – Health Sciences Descriptors is a structured and trilingual
It was developed from
The concepts that compose the DeCS vocabulary are organized in a hierarchical structure permitting searches in broader or more specific terms or all the terms that belong to a single hierarchy.
Its main purpose is to serve as a unique language for indexing and recovery of information among the components of the Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Information System,[2] coordinated by BIREME and that encompasses 37 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, permitting a uniform dialog between nearly 600 libraries.
DeCS participates in the unified terminology development project, UMLS – Unified Medical Language System of the NLM, with the responsibility of contributing with the terms in Portuguese[3] and Spanish.[4]