A LOGICAL FOUNDATION FOR REPRESENTATION OF CLINICAL-DATA

Objective: A general framervork for representation of clinical data th at provides a declarative semantics of terms and that allows developer s to define explicitly the relationships among both terms and combinat ions of terms. Design: Use of conceptual graphs as a standard represen tation of logic and of an existing standardized vocabulary, the System atized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED International), for lexical el ements. Concepts such as time, anatomy, and uncertainty must be modele d explicitly in a way that allows relation of these foundational conce pts to surface-level clinical descriptions in a uniform manner. Result s: The proposed framework was used to model a simple radiology report, which included temporal references. Conclusion: Formal logic provides a framework for formalizing the representation of medical concepts. A ctual implementations will be required to evaluate the practicality of this approach.