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Thinking Precedes Action: Using Software Engineering for the Development of a Terminology Database to Improve Access to Biomedical Documentation

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Biological and Medical Data Analysis (ISBMDA 2006)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNBI,volume 4345))

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Abstract

Relational databases have been used to represent lexical knowledge since the days of machine-readable dictionaries. However, although software engineering provides a methodological framework for the construction of databases, most developing efforts focus on content, implementation and time-saving issues, and forget about the software engineering aspects of software and database construction. We have defined a methodology for the development of lexical resources that covers this and other aspects, by following a sound software engineering approach to formally represent knowledge. Nonetheless, the conceptual model from which it departs has some major limitations that need to be overcome. Based on a short analysis of common problems in existing lexical resources, we present an upgraded conceptual model as a first step towards the methodological development of a hierarchically organized concept-based terminology database, to improve the access to medical information as part of the SINAMED and ISIS projects.

The research described in this paper has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Union from the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) – (TIN2005-08988-C02-01 and TIN2005-08988-C02-02) and (ERDF) – (FIT-350200-2005-16) for SINAMED and ISIS respectively.

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Vaquero, A., Sáenz, F., Álvarez, F., de Buenaga, M. (2006). Thinking Precedes Action: Using Software Engineering for the Development of a Terminology Database to Improve Access to Biomedical Documentation. In: Maglaveras, N., Chouvarda, I., Koutkias, V., Brause, R. (eds) Biological and Medical Data Analysis. ISBMDA 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4345. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11946465_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11946465_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-68063-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68065-9

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