title: On the linguistic representation of medical information: natural language, controlled language, and formal language.
abstract: Language is indispensable for the representation of medical information. We classified the methods of linguistic representation into three items: natural language, controlled language, and formal language. The characteristics of these are discussed; we focus especially on the preparation of data and data quality. We present the perspective that linguistic research in medical informatics can be considered as an effort to convert natural language into formal language and vice versa. The problems related to the conversion and the role of controlled language in medical linguistics are discussed in detail.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kiuchi
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kaihara
mesh_terms: D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled