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Research: Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications

The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications (LHNCBC) is an intramural research division of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM). LHNCBC leads programs and initiatives that produce and improve biomedical communications systems, methods, and technologies to enhance information usage among health professionals, patients, and the general public. Established in 1968 by a joint resolution of the United States Congress, the LHNCBC develops and maintains a broad range of projects and services that support the NLM's mission. These include:

 

  • ClinicalTrials.gov: a registry of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted around the world

  • Genetics Home Reference: a Web site with consumer-friendly information about the effects of genetic variations on humans

  • Profiles in Science: a digital archive of the manuscript collections of biomedical researchers, practitioners, and others who have championed the scientific enterprise. "Profiles" was created in collaboration with NLM's History of Medicine Division

  • Turning The Pages: a virtual reading experience created by combining animation and digitized images of rare historic books from the library's collection

  • MARS (Medical Records System): an application that automates the production of bibliographic records by scanning printed journal article abstracts

 

  • The NLM Personal Health Record: an accessible and secure tool for managing clinical information

 

  • RxTerms: a drug interface terminology derived from RxNorm

  • UMLS (Unified Medical Language System): terminology, classification, coding standards and web-based interfaces that provide access to biomedical information systems

  • Visible Human Project: a system that provides digitally photographed cross-sections of the Visible male and Visible female that can be converted into full-color, three-dimensional images

  • Newborn Screening Coding and Terminology Guide: terminology, classification, coding standards and a web-based interface for newborn tests and the conditions for which newborns are screened

  • NLM Gateway: a tool that searches all NLM resources at once

  • Indexing Initiative: a system that partially or completely automates the indexing of NLM journal literature in order to improve and speed retrieval of citations

  • Interactive Publications: Research towards developing a set of tools that will give access to the underlying data in multimedia-rich journal articles

  • Content-based Image Retrieval: research seeking to create an image retrieval system supporting hybrid image queries, text queries, and a biomedical image database

  • PubMed for Handhelds: a Web interface for searching MEDLINE with the browser of any mobile device