Smith Barry
Department of Philosophy and National Center for Biomedical Ontology, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.
J Biomed Inform. 2006 Jun;39(3):288-98. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2005.09.005. Epub 2005 Nov 2.
It is only by fixing on agreed meanings of terms in biomedical terminologies that we will be in a position to achieve that accumulation and integration of knowledge that is indispensable to progress at the frontiers of biomedicine. Standardly, the goal of fixing meanings is seen as being realized through the alignment of terms on what are called 'concepts.' Part I addresses three versions of the concept-based approach--by Cimino, by Wüster, and by Campbell and associates--and surveys some of the problems to which they give rise, all of which have to do with a failure to anchor the terms in terminologies to corresponding referents in reality. Part II outlines a new, realist solution to this anchorage problem, which sees terminology construction as being motivated by the goal of alignment not on concepts but on the universals (kinds, types) in reality and thereby also on the corresponding instances (individuals, tokens). We outline the realist approach and show how on its basis we can provide a benchmark of correctness for terminologies which will at the same time allow a new type of integration of terminologies and electronic health records. We conclude by outlining ways in which the framework thus defined might be exploited for purposes of diagnostic decision-support.
只有通过确定生物医学术语中术语的一致含义，我们才能实现知识的积累和整合，而这对于生物医学前沿的进展是必不可少的。通常，确定含义的目标被视为通过将术语与所谓的“概念”对齐来实现。第一部分讨论了基于概念的方法的三个版本——西米诺的、武斯特的以及坎贝尔及其同事的——并审视了它们所引发的一些问题，所有这些问题都与未能将术语在术语表中与现实中的相应指称物相联系有关。第二部分概述了针对这一联系问题的一种新的实在论解决方案，该方案将术语表构建视为由与现实中的共相（种类、类型）对齐的目标所驱动，从而也与相应的实例（个体、标记）对齐。我们概述了实在论方法，并展示了在此基础上我们如何能够为术语表提供正确性基准，这同时将允许一种新型的术语表与电子健康记录的整合。我们通过概述可以利用如此定义的框架来进行诊断决策支持的方式来得出结论。
