From a time standard for medical informatics to a controlled language for health

CEN ENV 12381 is a European Prestandard focusing on formal representation and explicit reference of temporal information in healthcare informatics and telematics. One of its merits is not just the possibility to represent natural language expressions containing time-related information in a structur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of medical informatics 1998-02, Vol.48 (1), p.85-101
Main Authors: Ceusters, W, Steurs, F, Zanstra, P, Van Der Haring, E, Rogers, J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Artificial Intelligence
Biological and medical sciences
Classification (of information)
Coding and classification
Computerized, statistical medical data processing and models in biomedicine
Controlled language
Encoding (symbols)
European Union
Formal terminological systems
Linguistics
Medical computing and teaching
Medical Informatics - standards
Medical sciences
Natural Language Processing
Terminology
Terminology as Topic
Time Factors
Vocabulary, Controlled
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Summary:CEN ENV 12381 is a European Prestandard focusing on formal representation and explicit reference of temporal information in healthcare informatics and telematics. One of its merits is not just the possibility to represent natural language expressions containing time-related information in a structured way, but also to give some mechanisms on how clinical language itself can be used to convey meaning unambiguously. As such, CEN ENV 12381 introduces the notion of `controlled language use' in the domain of healthcare. In this paper the principles behind controlled language design and use are explained. Through a detailed study of the inconsistencies and ambiguities that arise when interpreting Snomed procedure terms in the framework of the Galen-In-Use project, it is shown that most of them can be explained as a violation of sound term-formation principles. A proposal is made to develop a controlled language for health and to use it in subsequent versions of coding and classification systems. It is expected that such an endeavour will lead to a more effective application of linguistic engineering in areas such as automatic knowledge acquisition, automatic translation, and terminology validation in the domain of healthcare informatics.
ISSN:1386-5056
1872-8243
DOI:10.1016/S1386-5056(97)00114-7