title: Partitioning a vocabulary's IS-A hierarchy into trees.
abstract: Controlled medical vocabularies are useful in application areas such as medical information-systems and decision-support. However, such vocabularies are large and complex, and working with them can be daunting. It is important to provide a means for orienting users to the vocabulary's contents. This paper introduces a methodology for partitioning a vocabulary into small, meaningful pieces. The partitioning is done with respect to the vocabulary's IS-A hierarchy. The methodology, based on a set of rules for refining the IS-A hierarchy, is a process carried out by a user in conjunction with the computer. The methodology is demonstrated on a complex portion of a vocabulary.
authors.affiliation: CIS Dept., NJIT, Newark 07102, USA.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Perl
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Geller
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Halper
authors.forename: J J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Cimino
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Singh
mesh_terms: D002965:Classification; D008722:Methods; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled