NucLexNuclear Medicine Lexicon and Theranostics Ontology
Stage W0: private living prototype12 of 30 manuscripts drafted, 0 reviewed; 50 lexicon entries in draftWhat each later stage would need to show

Mathematical and computational foundations

Controlled vocabularies

Control means that someone decided what each term means, wrote it down, and takes responsibility for changing it.

MonographBriefNX-M05Proposed length 2,500 to 5,000 words

Writing brief. This monograph has been assigned but the manuscript is not yet written or approved. What follows is the commissioning brief: its question, outline, evidence instructions, and review requirements.

Central question

What does controlling a vocabulary achieve?

Reader promise

The reader will be able to inspect any list of codes and say what has been controlled (names, meanings, identifiers, changes) and what has not, and why a term with a label and no scope note cannot be safely reused.

Required development

  1. Explain naming, scope notes, identifiers, governance, and versions as separate controls: a preferred name fixes what the term is called; a scope note fixes what it covers; an identifier fixes reference independently of the name; governance fixes who may change any of these; a version fixes which state of the vocabulary a record was coded against. Show what goes wrong when each is missing.
  2. Compare code lists, terminology, and ontology. Place the three on a scale: a code list controls names and identifiers; a terminology adds definitions, synonyms, and some relationships; an ontology adds formal definitions from which relationships follow. State that each is appropriate for some uses and that moving up the scale costs maintenance.
  3. Use a documented biomedical example: the Unified Medical Language System as a controlled integration of many vocabularies, or a named laboratory or imaging code system cited to its current release. Show one actual term with its identifier, definition, and version history, verified against the source.
  4. Explain how the HL7 FHIR CodeSystem resource describes a controlled vocabulary, and distinguish describing a vocabulary from being one.

Evidence and review

Evidence to obtain: Cimino's desiderata (concept orientation, concept permanence, non-semantic identifiers, formal definitions, and the rest), cited to the paper; the UMLS description for a documented integration case; the FHIR R5 CodeSystem page, release pinned; and the editorial documentation of one named vocabulary, showing how a term is added, deprecated, or retired.

Review concern: a term may appear fully specified because it has a label and a code. The manuscript must show a case where two vocabularies use the same label for different scopes, and must state that reuse requires the scope note and version, not the label.

Controlled vocabulary, Identifier, Terminology server, Code system, Thesaurus for retrieval relationships, and Ontology for the formal end of the scale. Link at the point of use.

Review requirements

Source check of every displayed term against its named release. Domain review by a terminologist or clinical informatician. Editorial check that local teaching identifiers are labeled as such.

Review gate for this monograph

A label is not a complete definition.

The assignment exists. The manuscript has not been written or approved.