APPROACHES TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MEDICAL INFORMATICS GLOSSARY AND THESAURUS

In a project concerned with establishing a glossary and thesaurus for the medical informatics domain, various approaches to the task have be en investigated. The developers take the view that a glossary should b e a coherent system of terms, reflecting a coherent system of concepts that underlies a body of knowledge about a domain. A framework for th e conceptual analysis of the concepts/terms underlying the domain has been developed. The emphasis of this framework is on how the concepts relate together. This work has given an important insight into how the practical task of establishing well-structured vocabularies for a fie ld can be better achieved. An eclectic approach to term selection was adopted. Criteria for assessing what constitutes good definitions for concepts in a field were examined. Using all these approaches glossari es, thesauri and domain models of the medical informatics field are be ing developed. Another aspect of our work of particular interest is th e development of attributed definitions from which inheritance pattern s can be defined.