Medical and dermatology dictionaries: An examination of unstructured definitions and a proposal for the future - 24/08/11
Abstract |
Medical dictionaries serve to describe and clarify the term set used by medical professionals. In this commentary, we analyze a representative set of skin disease definitions from 2 prominent medical dictionaries, Stedman's Medical Dictionary and Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary. We find that there is an apparent lack of stylistic standards with regard to content and form. We advocate a new standard form for the definition of medical terminology, a standard to complement the easy-to-read yet unstructured style of the traditional dictionary entry. This new form offers a reproducible structure, paving the way for the development of a computer readable “dictionary” of medical terminology. Such a dictionary offers immediate update capability and a fundamental improvement in the ability to search for relationships between terms.
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Supported by National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Contract No. N01-AR-1-2255 (Drs Goldsmith and Papier [principal investigator], and Ms Byrnes). Conflicts of interest: None identified. |
Vol 50 - N° 1
P. 144-147 - janvier 2004 Retour au numéroBienvenue sur EM-consulte, la référence des professionnels de santé.
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