THE GRAIL CONCEPT MODELING LANGUAGE FOR MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY

The GALEN representation and integration language (GRAIL) has been dev eloped to support effective clinical user interfaces and extensible re -usable models of medical terminology. It has been used successfully t o develop the prototype GALEN common reference (CORE) model for medica l terminology and for a series of projects in clinical user interfaces within the GALEN and PEN&PAD projects. GRAIL is a description logic o r frame language with novel features to support part-whole and other t ransitive relations and to support the GALEN modelling style aimed at re-use and application independence. GRAIL began as an experimental la nguage. However, it has clarified many requirements for an effective k nowledge representation language for clinical concepts. It still has n umerous limitations despite its practical successes. The GRAIL experie nce is expected to form the basis for future languages which meet the same requirements but have greater expressiveness and more soundly bas ed semantics. This paper provides a description and motivation for the GRAIL language and gives examples of the modelling paradigm which it supports. Copyright 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.