title: Can we classify medical data dictionaries?
abstract: Medical Data Dictionaries enable a clinical information system to maintain a controlled vocabulary, to store descriptive knowledge about terms, to map between those terms and from those terms to external classifications. They support a variety of functions in the information system, ranging from structured documentation to knowledgebased functions. This paper derives a multi-axial classification for medical data dictionaries. Dictionaries are classified along 4 axes, a vocabulary axis defining vocabulary properties, an application axis which characterises the degree of linkage between dictionary and information system, a semantic axis defining the quality of inter-term relationships and finally a language axis which classifies rules for inter-term relationships in semiotic theory. As an example two existing dictionaries are classified in the model and reference is taken to the design of future dictionaries.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Medical Informatics, University Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 44, 35392 Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Bürkle
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D004018:Dictionaries, Medical as Topic; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D008492:Medical Informatics Computing; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled