A name is not enough.
The body of medical knowledge is so vast, and finding a fact within it is often so difficult and frustrating, that various systems have been proposed to help. reviewing the various approaches reveals some of the difficulties of the retrieval task and why it has not been easy to devise a general approach. The imprecision of medical terminology is a major stumbling block. The development of specialized systems to serve particular medical interests has hampered the wider applicability of many such systems. This article offers eight characteristics for an ideal medical knowledge system. The key is for each medical term to be coded and independently defined, with synonymous terms to be equated through term codes. Any coded term could become the nucleus of a cluster of related, coded terms. The knowledge system would encompass all of medicine, would be in the public domain, and would be independent of hardware and software. While such a system is utopian, consideration of its characteristics can further the development of better interim systems.
Bishop
C W
CW
D002965:Classification / Q000379:methods*; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000592:standards*; D012015:Reference Standards; D009626:Terminology as Topic