SYMBOLIC ANATOMIC KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN THE READ CODES VERSION-3 - STRUCTURE AND APPLICATION

The Read Thesaurus (Version 3 of the Read Codes) is a controlled medic al vocabulary produced during the Clinical Terms Projects with the inv olvement of over 2,000 health care professionals from all United Kingd om specialties. In addition to allowing the transfer of clinical infor mation in a meaningful way, it supports analysis of this information a nd provides a basis for the development of shareable medical knowledge bases. The thesaurus includes a comprehensive, dynamic set of over 7, 000 gross anatomic concepts richly linked in a network with over 16,00 0 operative procedures and 40,000 disorders. The representation of ana tomic concepts aims to balance the requirements for expressivity, clea rness, and simplicity. The underlying directed acyclic graph hierarchy is independent of the alphanumeric code and enables continued refinem ent and expansion. A template table allows semantic definition, qualif ication, and linkage of concepts.