Apelon is very pleased to announce general availability of Version 4.0 of the Distributed Terminology System (DTS). For over fifteen years, DTS has been the industry’s leading vocabulary server supporting the creation, maintenance and deployment of healthcare terminologies. Recently made available as an open source project, DTS is a comprehensive solution for the deployment of standardized terminologies, with local enhancements, into distributed application environments. DTS creates a platform for robust data standardization and interoperability for EHRs, HIEs, and decision support systems by establishing a single common resource for an organization’s terminology assets. Being open source, DTS also provides significant cost, integration and adoption advantages compared to proprietary solutions.

DTS Version 4 is a major new release that enhances both functional capabilities and ease-of-use. Key features include:

• A New Enterprise Architecture – The DTS server has been completely rewritten to use Enterprise JavaBeans 3 (EJB) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). This architecture simplifies many operational aspects of DTS and provides enhanced security and transaction options. Comprehensive web service, Java, and .NET APIs are available and most popular backend RDBMS systems are supported.
• Versioning – Version 4 extends the DTS Object Model to support the complete history (versioning) of Namespaces and Subsets: e.g., what did SNOMED CT look like in 2009? Search and browse functions can specify the desired version/date and concept comparison and full historical views are supported. Locally-developed Namespaces and Subsets can be “published”, creating a new, finalized version for distribution while enabling development to continue on the “working” version.
• New Metadata – User-definable metadata can now be added to Namespaces, Versions, and Authorities. Metadata additions are available for both Subscription and Local DTS Objects.
• Enhanced Subsets/Value Sets -Subset Expressions are significantly more expressive supporting multiple namespaces and/or subsets, specification of Namespace and Subset versions, and support for association-based hierarchies for Thesaurus Namespaces.
• Role-based access control.
• New Browser Implementation – Version 4 introduces a new DTS Browser, based on the JavaServer Faces 2 architecture and RichFaces 4 framework. This new framework will support enhanced web browsing and migration of editing functions to a web platform.
• Editor Module Architecture – The DTS Editor provides extensive support of Version 4 features. The Search, Browse and Detail panels, for example, all support one-click selection and viewing of version snapshots of DTS objects. The Version 4 DTS Editor extends its popular Plug-in Framework to a new Module Framework making all Editor functionality available through independent Modules; the Editor layout can be completely customized for specific user requirements. Role-based access control has been added and the Editor has been enhanced for internationalization; prompts and messages have been relocated to a Locale-dependent Resources file permitting translation of the GUI into many non-English languages.

For existing DTS users, the DTS API is fully backwards compatible, and a Migration Utility is available for transferring local content from DTS Version 3.5.2. See theDTS 4 Installation Guide for further information.

DTS Version 4.0 is ready for your evaluation, testing and deployment athttp://www.apelondts.org/. We look forward to your feedback