Multiple Terminologies in a Health Portal: Automatic Indexing and Information Retrieval

Background: In the specific context of developing quality-controlled health gateways, several standards must, be respected (e.g. Dublin Core for metadata element set; thesaurus MeSH as the controlled vocabulary to index Internet resources; HON code to accredit qnality of health Web sites). These standards were applied to create the CISMeF Web site (French acronym for Catalog & Index of Health Internet resources in French). Objective: IN this work, the strategic shift, of t. lie CISMeF team is intended to index and retrieve French resources not anymore with a single terminology (MeSH thesaurus) but. with the main health terminologies available in French (ICD 10, SNOMED International, CCAM, ATC). Methods &, Results: Since 2005, we have developed the French Multi-Terminology Indexer (F-MTI), using a multiterminology approach and mappings between health terminologies. This tool is used for automatic indexing and information retrieval. Conclusion: Since the last qnarter of 2008, F-MTI is daily used in the CISMeF production environment and is connected to a French Health Multi-Terminology Server.