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The goal of healthcare terminologies was and

is to aggregate patient descriptions by meaning. The desired aggregations require that the terminologies be unambiguous and non-redundant.

Unambiguous means that the concepts named in a

given terminology each have a unique meaning.

Synonyms are associated with a concept and are

linked together in the best case by meaningless

identifiers. This will be discussed in greater detail

later in the book. Again, this book is about units

of meaning, their names, and the ways they can

be created, maintained, and used in healthcare. It

is not about words and their meanings.

The study of knowledge is epistemology. The

aspect of epistemology that will be discussed in

this textbook is the representation of this knowledge. Knowledge representation is important

for all aspects of research and for our under-

standing and continuous quality improvement

of clinical care.

The

triangle relates thoughts, symbols, and referents

by three specific relations: thought to sym-

bol = correct, thought to referent = adequate, sym-

bol to referent = true (see Fig. 2.2) [4]. The

triangle gave a visual representation to the place

Fig. 2.2

Semiotic triangle

Thought or reference

Symbol Stands for Referent

(an imputed relation)

*True

of symbols or in our field identifiers within the

construction of a terminology or any other knowl-

edge representation schema. This paradigm also

provided a logical framework as to where lan-

guage fits within our understanding of concepts.

In terminological construction, the abstract

thought would correspond to the thought and

would not be altered regardless of the language

or symbol used, and the referent is the object

itself, and the symbol can be a code (identifier) or

a string in a human readable language.

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