Lexicon · The human story of meaning
Controlled vocabulary
Fully specified name: Controlled vocabulary (concept)
A managed set of terms used consistently for a defined purpose.
- Scope note
- Definitions and scope notes explain intended meaning.
- Synonyms
- None recorded as true synonyms in this context.
- Monograph
- Controlled vocabularies (planned; brief only)
- External mappings
- None recorded. In W0 no mapping to SNOMED CT® or any external authority is asserted for this entry. A future mapping record will carry source system, identifier, version, relation type, evidence, author, confidence where meaningful, and review state.
- Formal status
- Editorial entry only. It is not part of any released ontology and a prose edit here changes no formal definition.
Draft. This entry is an unreviewed draft. Its sources have not been checked by a named person and no domain reviewer has approved it. Treat every claim as provisional.
Notes
A controlled vocabulary is a list of terms that someone maintains: each term has a definition, a scope note that says what it does and does not cover, usually an identifier, and a governance process that decides when terms are added, changed, or retired. "Controlled" means that users do not invent their own labels for the same thing; they pick from the list, and the list is versioned.
Physicians meet controlled vocabularies as pick lists in an electronic record and as the codes on a claim. Scientists meet them as the terms a database requires for annotation. Radiochemists meet them in nomenclature rules and in the labels a regulator accepts. In each case the label alone is not the meaning; the definition and scope note are, and a vocabulary that ships labels without them is a source of silent disagreement.
A controlled vocabulary is narrower than an Ontology, which also states relationships and may support reasoning, and narrower than a Thesaurus, which records relationships among terms for retrieval. It is the foundation both of them rest on. The FHIR Code system resource is one standard way of describing such a vocabulary for exchange.