ISO/FDIS 17117-1

Date: 2024-10-03
ISO/DISFDIS 17117--1:2024(en)
ISO/TC 215/WG 3
Secretariat: ANSI
Date: 2025-08-18
Health informatics – — Terminological resources – —
Part 1:
Characteristics
Informatique de santé -- — Ressources terminologiques -- —
Partie 1: Caractéristiques
FDIS stage
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ISO/DISFDIS 17117--1:20242025(en)
Contents
Foreword . iv
Introduction . v
1 Scope . 1
2 Normative references . 2
3 Terms and definitions . 2
3.1 General terms . 2
3.2 Relations between concepts . 5
3.3 Formal concept representation . 6
3.4 Terminological resources (in health domain) . 7
4 Characteristics of terminological resources in the health domain . 9
4.1 Basics . 9
4.2 Pre-coordinated characteristics aiming at identification of a specific concept/term . 10
4.3 Characteristics related to extensibility for concept representations . 12
4.4 Characteristics related to data aggregation or classification system . 13
4.5 Characteristics related to formal concept representation and semantic interoperability 14
4.6 Characteristics related to maintenance of terminological resources . 16
5 Functions invoked by a certain set of characteristics . 17
5.1 Basics . 17
5.2 Data capture . 18
5.3 Display/presentation/identification . 19
5.4 Data aggregation for statistical analysis . 20
5.5 Reasoning . 20
5.6 Maintenance-related functions . 21
Annex A (informative) Relations between characteristics, functions, requirements and
evaluation criteria of terminological resources . 23
Annex B (informative) Relations among terminological resources . 25
Bibliography . 27

iii
Foreword
ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards
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The procedures used to develop this document and those intended for its further maintenance are described
in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1. In particular, the different approval criteria needed for the different types of
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ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2 (see www.iso.org/directives).
ISO draws attention to the possibility that the implementation of this document may involve the use of (a)
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www.iso.org/iso/foreword.html.
This document was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 215, Health informatics, in collaboration with
the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Technical Committee CEN/TC 251, Health informatics, in
accordance with the Agreement on technical cooperation between ISO and CEN (Vienna Agreement).
This firstsecond edition of ISO 17117-1 cancels and replaces the first edition (ISO /TS 17117-1:2018,), which
has been technically revised.
The main changes are as follows:
— The document has been updated to reflect the state of medical and technical practices at a time, and
incorporating relevant new normative references.
A list of all parts in the ISO 17117 series can be found on the ISO website.
Any feedback or questions on this document should be directed to the user’s national standards body. A
complete listing of these bodies can be found at www.iso.org/members.html.
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ISO/DISFDIS 17117--1:20242025(en)
Introduction
Health terminology is complex and multifaceted. It has been estimated that up to 45 million different terms
are needed to adequately describe health-related concepts such as conditions of patients and populations,
actions in healthcare, and related concepts, such as medicines, biomedical molecules, genes, organisms,
[3]
technical methods and social concepts. (see ISO 17115). Many formal and less formal terminological
resources exist to represent this complexity. These can be called terminological systems, coding systems,
formal concept representation systems, classification systems, and others. Specific features of different
terminological resources make them more or less useful for particular purposes and technological
environments.
The need for formal terminological resources to support health information management has been widely
[13][14][15 [6][7][8]]
recognized. . Such resources are required for precise data collection, accurate interpretation of
[14 [7]]
data and interoperability among information systems that exchange such data. . National governments,
healthcare organizations and others are currently concerned with the question of which of the available
terminological resources will meet their requirements, i.e. they wish to ‘assign value’ to specific terminological
resources to decide which are suitable for their purposes and healthcare contexts.
1)
A set of criteria to support such evaluations was originally published in ISO/TS 17117:2002. . The main
purpose was to enable users to assess whether a terminological resource has the characteristics that will
support their specified requirements, since the characteristics of a terminological resource influence its utility
and appropriateness in applications. There has been much progress in the study and use of terminological
[16][17 [9][10]
resources since that time and some experience of formal evaluations. .
As the first part of the entire revision work, this document (ISO 17117-1) identifies the characteristics of
terminological resources in healthcare (Clause 4(Clause 4)) and functions or roles invoked by those
characteristics (Clause 5(Clause 5).). This document also provides a framework to identify different types of
terminological resources using a combination of those characteristics and functions, which is essential for the
development of criteria for the categorization of terminological resources in healthcare. Requirements for,
and evaluation criteria of, terminological resources in healthcare, addressed in other parts of ISO 17117, are
tightly related to the characteristics of terminological resources and functions that they can provide.
The target groups for this document are:
a) organizations wishing to select terminological systems for use in healthcare information systems;
b) developers of terminological systems;
c) developers of terminology standards;
d) those undertaking independent evaluations or academic reviews of terminological resources;
e) terminology Registration Authorities.

1)
Withdrawn.
v
DRAFT International Standard ISO/DIS 17117-1:2024(en)

Health informatics — Terminological resources — —
Part 1:
Characteristics
1 Scope
This document defines universal and specialized characteristics of health terminological resources that make
them fit for the purposes required of various applications. It covers only to terminological resources that are
primarily designed to be used for clinical concept representation or to those parts of other terminological
resources designed to be used for clinical concept representation.
This document helps users to assess whether a terminology has the characteristics or provides the functions
that will support their specified requirements. In order to do that, this document focuses to defineon defining
characteristics and functions of terminological resources in healthcare that can be used to identify different
types of terminological resources for categorization purposes.
NOTE Categorization of healthcare terminological systems according to the name of the system might not be helpful
and has caused confusion in the past.
The target groups for this document are:
a) a) organizations wishing to select terminological systems for use in healthcare information
systems;
b)a) b) developers of terminological systems;
c)a) c) developers of terminology standards;
d) those undertaking independent evaluations/academic reviews of terminological resources;
d)a) e) terminology Registration Authorities.
The following aspects are not covered in this document.:
— — Evaluationsevaluations of terminological resources.;
— — Healthhealth service requirements for terminological resources and evaluation criteria based on the
characteristics and functions.;
— — Thethe nature and quality of mappings between different terminologies. ;
NOTE It is unlikely that a single terminology will meet all the terminology requirements of a healthcare
organization: some terminology providers produce mappings to administrative or classification systems such as the
International Classification of Diseases (ICD). The presence of such maps would be a consideration in the evaluation
of the terminology.
— — Thethe nature and quality of mappings between different versions of the same terminology. ;
NOTE To support data migration and historical retrieval, terminology providers can provide maps between
versions of their terminology. The presence of such maps would be a consideration in the evaluation of the
terminology.
— — Terminology terminology server requirements and techniques and tools for terminology developers.;
— — Characteristicscharacteristics for computational biology terminology.
2 Normative references
There are no normative references in this document.
3 Terms and definitions
For the purposes of this document, the following terms and definitions apply.
ISO and IEC maintain terminologicalterminology databases for use in standardization at the following
addresses:
— — ISO Online browsing platform: available at https://www.iso.org/obp
— — IEC Electropedia: available at https://www.electropedia.org/
3.1 General terms
3.1.1 3.1.1
concept
unit of knowledge created by a unique combination of characteristics (3.1.3(3.1.3))
Note 1 to entry: Informally
...