Gu H, Halper M, Geller J, Perl Y
CIS Department, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark 07120, USA.
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 1999 Jul-Aug;6(4):283-303. doi: 10.1136/jamia.1999.0060283.
Controlled medical terminologies (CMTs) have been recognized as important tools in a variety of medical informatics applications, ranging from patient-record systems to decision-support systems. Controlled medical terminologies are typically organized in semantic network structures consisting of tens to hundreds of thousands of concepts. This overwhelming size and complexity can be a serious barrier to their maintenance and widespread utilization. The authors propose the use of object-oriented databases to address the problems posed by the extensive scope and high complexity of most CMTs for maintenance personnel and general users alike.
The authors present a methodology that allows an existing CMT, modeled as a semantic network, to be represented as an equivalent object-oriented database. Such a representation is called an object-oriented health care terminology repository (OOHTR).
The major benefit of an OOHTR is its schema, which provides an important layer of structural abstraction. Using the high-level view of a CMT afforded by the schema, one can gain insight into the CMT's overarching organization and begin to better comprehend it. The authors' methodology is applied to the Medical Entities Dictionary (MED), a large CMT developed at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. Examples of how the OOHTR schema facilitated updating, correcting, and improving the design of the MED are presented.
The OOHTR schema can serve as an important abstraction mechanism for enhancing comprehension of a large CMT, and thus promotes its usability.
受控医学术语集（CMT）已被公认为是各种医学信息学应用中的重要工具，从患者记录系统到决策支持系统均是如此。受控医学术语集通常以语义网络结构组织，包含数万到数十万的概念。这种庞大的规模和复杂性可能严重阻碍其维护和广泛应用。作者提议使用面向对象数据库来解决大多数CMT因范围广泛和高度复杂给维护人员及普通用户带来的问题。
作者提出一种方法，可将现有的以语义网络建模的CMT表示为等效的面向对象数据库。这种表示称为面向对象医疗术语库（OOHTR）。
OOHTR的主要优点在于其模式，它提供了重要的结构抽象层。利用该模式提供的CMT高级视图，人们可以深入了解CMT的总体组织并开始更好地理解它。作者的方法应用于医学实体词典（MED），这是哥伦比亚长老会医学中心开发的一个大型CMT。展示了OOHTR模式如何促进MED的更新、校正和设计改进的示例。
OOHTR模式可作为一种重要的抽象机制，用于增强对大型CMT的理解，从而提高其可用性。
