Homework: Vocabulary (Medical Entities Dictionary)
                              
            (Introduction to Medical Informatics)
         (http://www.cpmc.columbia.edu/edu/textbook)

Log onto the machine called cucis using telnet.

Run the command "medbrowser", which will allow you to look
at the institution's vocabulary called the Medical Entities
Dictionary (MED).

You will see a menu of choices. The most useful ones are as
follows:

     m - given a medcode (a unique 1 to 5 digit number that
       identifies a term in the vocabulary) it tells you
       all its "slots", which contain the relations and
       attributes of the term.
     f - given a text phrase, it gives you all the terms
       that either contain the phrase, or are related to
       the phrase (e.g., the phrase "renal" will find
       information about kidney).
     v - given a medcode and a slot code, it will tell you
       what is stored in that slot. Most of this
       information is available more easily under the "m"
       option, but you will need this to find the children
       (slotcode -1) and descendents (slotcode -2) of a
       term.

Find the following information:

  1.   What is the medcode for the term "serum potassium ion
     tests"?
  2.   What is the medcode for the vocabulary term "iron"?
  3.   "Iron" is measured by what class of laboratory tests
     (see the "measured-by" slot under your answer for "iron")?
  4.   What are the specific tests that measure "iron" (they
     are "descendents" of the class in answer 3)?
  5.   Look up "hypokalemia". What is the medcode and the real
     name of the term? What are other "synonyms" for the term?
     (Note that in this example, the synonyms help define what
     the terms means.)
  6.   What is the "ICD9 code" for hypokalemia?
  7.   The root (top) of the vocabulary is a term called
     "medical entity". What is its medcode? What are its
     children? (Note that everything else in the vocabulary is
     stored under one of these classes.)
  8.   Look up the terms that contain the phrase "myocardial
     infarction" (which means heart attack). You will see many
     answers, since many terms contain that phrase. Pick the one
     term that best represents the concept "myocardial
     infarction." It will be the most general term in the group,
     which means that most other terms will be descendents of it.
     (Some terms, like "sequelae of myocardial infarction, other
     (ICD9)", will not be a descendent.)