We at Apelon appreciate the interest in DTS and would
like to respond to some of the helpful observations in this forum.
We’ve updated the FAQ to answer the question of
“What is DTS?” Briefly, The Distributed Terminology System
(DTS) was developed by Apelon to provide robust and comprehensive support
for the acquisition, management and deployment of terminologies, code
sets, and mappings. DTS supports standard terminologies, potentially with local
enhancements, as well as local terminologies,
and terminology subsets, in both production and back office
environments for a wide range of healthcare applications (although the software
is in no way limited to healthcare). DTS is a proven suite of Java-based
terminology software components organized in a three-tier
architecture. The DTS Server supports Java and C# client APIs for uniform
access to multiple terminologies housed in a relational database (Oracle and
SQL Server are supported; open source database systems are under
consideration). DTS includes a web-based Browser and an
extensible desktop Editor, along with a suite
of extensible plug-ins for import, export, query and enhanced
display. All DTS software components are now available under the
popular Apache 2.0 open source license. In addition, Apelon offers
commercial software support as well as subscription content services for those
desiring convenient and timely access to a wide variety of leading medical
terminologies. For further information, see the DTS White Paper at http://www.apelon.com/products/white%20papers/DTS%20White%20Paper%20V34.pdf.
(We have not yet updated the White Paper to reflect the open source
availability, but will do so shortly.)
DTS documentation is included in the SourceForge
download package. For convenience, we’ve also made the
documentation directly available from the SourceForge DTS Wiki: http://apelon-dts.wiki.sourceforge.net/DTS+3.4.1+Documents
The DTS Editor is distinct from Mycroft, which is a
standalone viewer for terminologies such as SNOMED CT, CPT, and ICD-9-CM (Mycroft is
not open source but is available at no cost from http://support.apelon.com/mycroft/download.asp).
The Editor and another Principal Contributor to the
HL7 / ANSI standard Common Terminology Services (CTS) specification are Apelon
employees. We look forward to continued participation in future CTS
developments.
We also welcome further questions on the SourceForge
site or otherwise.
Thanks,
Caroline Lim Macumber
Informatics Consultant
Apelon, Inc.