The Disease Ontology browser is a web application that allows for exploration of the Disease Ontology. It allows for full text searching over the whole ontology, advanced searches for: disease name, synonym, definition, subset, DOID, alternative ID, Xrefs (disease vocabulary cross references), as well as visualization of relations between nodes.

The Disease Ontology OBO and OWL files are updated (in DO's GitHub ) daily, as a formal data release monthly.

To search for DO metadata via our API, use the URL https://www.disease-ontology.org/api/metadata/.
Example: https://www.disease-ontology.org/api/metadata/DOID:4

Add an 'id' query with a DO identifier (DOID) to the website URL.
Example: https://www.disease-ontology.org/?id=DOID:9256

In the Advanced Search box, you can include multiple search terms to create a complex query, by clicking on "Add New Field" and specifying your Boolean query (AND, OR, NOT) from the Advanced Search menu.

The DO files are documented in DO's GitHub in README_DO_Files.

The most up to date DO files can be downloaded from DO's GitHub repository, in the src/ontology directory.

New terms, definitions, suggestions and questions regard the Disease Ontology can be submitted to the DO Term Tracker.

The Disease Ontology is designed around clinical terminology. The DO team has prepared a glossary of clinical terms to clarify difficult concepts.

When BFO was developed, a decade after the DO was created, the biomedical ontology community discussed how to connect the DO and other ontologies that pre-date BFO, e.g. Gene Ontology (GO), with it. We determined that single domain ontologies (DO is only diseases) are interoperable with BFO and that diseases would be treated as BFO dispositions. Thus, DO's 'disease' (DOID:4) should be considered a subclass of BFO’s ‘disposition’ (BFO:0000016).

When OGMS was created, they utilized DO’s ‘disease’ (DOID:4) to make an equivalent OGMS ‘Disease’ term (OGMS:0000031).