Benefits of Structured Terminology

Overview

Summary of benefits of a structured terminology.

What is a structured terminology?

Aspects of a structured terminology include:

• Represents collection of meanings relevant to a problem space
• Meanings are given formal codes (maintained over time)
• Meanings have multiple lexically dissimilar names
• Meanings are organized hierarchically (e.g. taxonomy)
• Meanings are often given textual (human readable) definitions
• Meanings can also have formal logical definitions
• Allows for “reasoning” and “inference”
• Mathematically speaking
• Classification by meaning (all names mean the same thing)
• Classification by lexical similarity (“kidney disease” and “disease of kidney”)

Types include:

• Simple terminology/Thesaurus (list of codes with preferred terms/synonyms)
• Taxonomy (a hierarchically organized simple terminology)
• Ontology (a taxonomy combined with formal logical definitions and the use of a classifier to ensure consistency). Concepts are either "primitive" or "sufficiently defined" meaning they have a logical definition that includes necessary and sufficient conditions to differentiate it from other concepts in the ontology
• Metathesaurus (an integration of multiple thersauri, taxonomies, and ontologies).  

Benefits

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References/Links

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology