Representing medical knowledge: reconciling the present or creating the future?

Modern technology has sparked the creation of computing systems that perform many medically related tasks, but communication between these systems is limited, in part by differences in the terminology used for various purposes and in part by the changing nature of medical concepts. The Unified Medical Language System represents an attempt to find a means of translation between diverse knowledge systems. An alternative, which we propose, is to agree on a knowledge base for the future and make use of present accomplishments in moving toward that goal.