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