Top-Level Design of a Normalized Chinese Clinical Terminology: An Integrated Application of National and International Data Standards and Terminologies.

This work describes the design and building of a Chinese clinical terminology (called CCTS). The terminology is similar to an ontology, and will promote the use of Chinese clinical data, such as indexing, retrieval and exchange. The terminology is a TOPL concept framework, which integrates hierarchical structures of Chinese and interenational reference terminology standards for health. Our framework includes 14 subtrees, 2286 classes and 65 relationships.