TRANSFERRING KNOWLEDGE FROM ONE SYSTEM TO ANOTHER

Although knowledge is contained in many systems, moving it from one sy stem to another is not an easy task because each system is tailored in its own unique way and because knowledge configurations are usually c opyrighted. To populate our FRAMEMED knowledge base we turned to the N LM Metathesaurus as a readily-available open source of knowledge. We w ere disappointed by the greatly variable granularity of the concepts a nd the lack of definitions that could be borrowed. Some reference book s in electronic form seem attractive but reformatting will require exc essive human intervention and copyright negotiation.