Evolving standards for clinical content in biomedicine: overview and lessons
by Prakash M. Nadkarni
International Journal of Services and Standards (IJSS), Vol. 1, No. 1, 2004

Abstract: In this paper, we review the various categories of standards in biomedicine: communication protocols, interchange standards, data model standards and controlled vocabularies. We then focus on the types of clinical data, discuss where vocabularies are employed, and consider various challenges that confront those who design and maintain controlled vocabularies, as well as those who use them. Biomedicine has a large number of partially redundant vocabularies that have evolved for different purposes, and we discuss how the National Library of Medicine's UMLS project attempts to merge these into a single resource. We introduce Extensible Markup Language (XML), provide a brief tutorial and describe pitfalls that can lead to its inappropriate use. Finally, we discuss the problems in designing and implementing biomedical standards, providing both a historical perspective as well as relating such issues to similar ones in information technology.

Online publication date: Thu, 18-Nov-2004

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