NF EN ISO 17117-1, S97-975-1 (07/2023)

This document defines universal and specific characteristics of health terminology resources that make them suitable for the prescribed uses of different applications. It concerns only terminology resources, or parts of other terminology resources, primarily designed to be used for the purpose of representing clinical concepts. This document helps users determine whether a terminology has the characteristics or offers the functions to meet their particular requirements. This document focuses on defining the features and functions related to terminology resources in healthcare that can be used to identify different types of terminology resources for categorization purposes. Articles 4 and 5 highlight the categorization of terminology resources according to their characteristics and functions rather than according to their title. NOTE Categorizing health care terminology systems by title may be unhelpful and has been a source of confusion in the past. The target groups for this document are: a) organizations interested in choosing terminology systems for integration into health care information systems; (b) persons responsible for developing terminology systems; (c) persons responsible for developing terminology standards; d) persons carrying out independent assessments/academic reviews of terminology resources; (e) terminology registration bodies. This document contains general characteristics and criteria by which systems can be evaluated. The following considerations are outside the scope of this document: — assessments of terminology resources; — health service requirements for terminology resources and evaluation criteria based on the characteristics and functions of these resources; — the nature and quality of the correspondence of the different terminologies. It seems unlikely that a single terminology will meet all of a healthcare organization's terminology requirements: some terminology providers map to statistical or administrative classifications, such as the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Such correspondences must be taken into consideration when evaluating the terminology; — the nature and quality of the correspondence between different versions of the same terminology. To assist with data migration and historical retrieval, terminology providers can make mappings between different versions of their terminology available. Such correspondences must be taken into consideration when evaluating the terminology; — requirements for terminology servers and the techniques and tools available to those responsible for developing terminologies; — the characteristics of computational biology terminology. Advances in the fields of medicine and the science of terminology will necessitate timely updating of this document.
(Automatic translation from French)