Methodologically designing a hierarchically organized concept-based terminology database to improve access to biomedical documentation

Relational databases have been used to represent lexical knowledge since the days of machine-readable dictionaries. However, although software engineering provides a methodological framework for the construction of databases, most developing efforts focus on content, implementation and time-saving issues, and forget about the software engineering aspects of database construction. We have defined a methodology for the development of lexical resources that covers this and other aspects, by following a sound software engineering approach to formally represent knowledge. Nonetheless, the conceptual model from which it departs has some major limitations that need to be overcome. Based on a short analysis of common problems in existing lexical resources, we present an upgraded conceptual model as a first step towards the methodological development of a hierarchically organized concept-based terminology database, to improve the access to medical information as part of the SINAMED and ISIS projects.Sin financiación0.292 SJR (2006) Q2, 79/200 Computer science (miscellaneous); Q4, 77/115 Theoretical computer scienceUE