Language Technology on Display at the Public Health Language Site

December 6, 2012

We’d like to share this interesting example of thesaurus management at the UK and Ireland’s “Public Health Language” searchable site, hosted by the UK’s Association of Public Health Observatories. The project has its roots in the Public Health Information Thesaurus created by that country’s Health Development Agency (HDA), now called the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). The site’s home page tells us:

“The Health Intelligence team at NICE has been working with the Public Health Observatories and the National Library for Health Team on issues related to interoperability and public health. Part of this work involved the development of a common public health language to describe information and resources that are held on our websites and databases with the aim of improving the searching for and retrieval of these resources.

“The Health Development Agency and England’s Public Health Observatories (PHO’s) have developed a unified Public Health Language (PHL) [formally known as the National Public Health Language] to facilitate interoperability.”

The first version of the language debuted in 2004, and integrated the HDA’s Public Health Information Thesaurus with PHO’s Public Health Information Tagging System. Quite the project! They are currently on version 2.0.

The Public Health Language service is provided by MultiTes, using its popular thesaurus construction and publishing software. MultiTes developed the first thesaurus management program for the PC in 1983, and organizations large and small in over 30 countries now use their software.

Cynthia Murrell, December 06, 2012

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext

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