About Problem List MD

This web site demonstrates proof-of-concept that useful problem list metadata can be based on expert clinician consensus. Content experts located at academic or large community hospitals came to consensus on metadata for 21 common problems.  The experts donated their time, and the metadata was available for download with a no-fee license from 2020 to 2023.

This site shows examples of metadata for 21 common medical problems.   Complete versions of such a knowledge-base could be used with EHR aggregate display tools and clinical decision support (CDS).  The content was curated at the Center for ProMaps, associated with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. The metadata content created at UW used publicly available vocabularies such as SNOMED, Rx Norm and LOINC.

Problem Concept Maps (ProMaps) were developed to show how such metadata could drive aggregate data displays from the problem list. The maps shown on this site include two data domains, lab results and medications that are relevant to particular problems. Future maps created by others could include imaging studies, diagnostic procedures and documents that could be included in a problem driven auto-summary.

For an example of how a software company might choose to integrate maps like ours into a Problem Oriented View product, visit the Epilepsy section in this mockup.