USERS CONCEPTUAL VIEWS ON MEDICAL INFORMATION DATABASES

As information databases we consider all the kinds of information repo sitories that are handled by computer systems. When querying very larg e information databases, the end-users are often faced with the proble m to parse their questions efficiently into the query languages of the computer systems. Conceptual graphs were initially designed for natur al language analysis and understanding. Due to their closeness to sema ntic networks, their expressiveness is powerful enough to be applied t o knowledge representation and use by computer systems. This work demo nstrates that conceptual graphs are a suitable means to model both the information in, patient databases and the queries to these databases, and that operations on graphs can compute the pattern matching proces s needed to provide the answers. A prototype that exploits this model is presented. Experiments have been made with the material furnished b y the Unified Medical Language System project (version 2, 1992) of the National Library of Medicine, USA.