Health Sciences Descriptors

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

DeCS – Health Sciences Descriptors is a structured and trilingual

MEDLINE and other databases. In the VHL, Virtual Health Library, DeCS is the tool that permits the navigation between records and sources of information through controlled concepts and organized in Portuguese
, Spanish and English.

It was developed from

Health Surveillance
(2005), and Science and Health (2005).

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, UMLSUnified Medical Language System of the NLM, with the responsibility of contributing with the terms in Portuguese[3] and Spanish.[4]

References

External links