Approach to the Creation of a Multilingual, Medical Interface Terminology

Health care professionals experience difficulties in the correct medical registration of clinical work and in the efficient searching for answers to clinical questions. These difficulties arise often from a deficient interface between human and machine language. Terminological solutions are often naive attempts to standardize language and terms, with conceptual systems, which may overwhelm the users by their complexity, or be too restrictive to represent crucial details. Moreover, local, professional and cultural differences in vernacular expression are often not represented. We must take into account vocabulary differences between Specialists and General Practitioners talk-ing about the same medical fact. There are even more differences between the languages of patients and physicians. Also, the vocabulary being used evolves over time and space and many local expres-sions exist to designate the same diseases or body parts.