J Korean Soc Med Inform.  1999 Dec;5(3):31-36.

The Development of Viewer of Electronic Medical Vocabulary based on MED: The Viewer of Electronic Medical Vocabulary

• Hwang JJ
• Lee JO

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
To Implement Effective Vocabulary Viewer for Electronic Medical Vocabulary Database Such as MED. DESIGN: A few Medical Vocabulary Database access method are reviewed. Some of their disadvantage of acquiring specific medical concepts are identified. MED has chosen as an example Medical Vocabulary System. We studied AccessMED, a vocabulary browser that supports lexical matching and the traversal of hierarchical and semantic links, and enhanced methodology of medical vocabulary browsing and acquiring medical vocabulary.
RESULTS
The paper suggests platform independent client-server architecture Medical Vocabulary Viewer, MEDUSA. Additional support for Medical Vocabulary Browsing options such as display all ancestor, multiple concepts displaying, and bookmarking workspaces are implemented.
CONCLUSION
Since MEDUSA uses client-server architecture along with scripting language such as TCL/TK as implementation language, it runs multiple platform. We claim MEDUSA can be easily integrated with other Medical Vocabulary such as UMLS. Using bookmark and annotation function of MEDUSA enables many vocabulary developers from multiple sites to communicate and discuss new concepts better.

MeSH Terms

Semantics
Unified Medical Language System
Vocabulary*