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

Background: In the speci c context of developing qualitycontrolled 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 quality 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 the 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 quarter of 2008, F-MTI is daily used in the CISMeF production environment and is connected to a French Health MultiTerminology Server.