Cortex
Semedica's Cortex taxonomy is a comprehensive, standards-connected medical taxonomy informed by more than 10 years of analysis of the world's most important medical literature. Cortex is a living taxonomy that is updated daily as Semedica indexers encounter new concepts in journal articles, medical news, new textbooks, guidelines, and other publications. In addition, the Cortex taxonomy uniquely integrates user search strings from popular medical applications into its entries to cover synonyms, abbreviations, professional jargon, and other equivalents.
Cortex currently includes:
- more than 44,000 hierarchical concepts covering all areas of clinical medicine
- more than 269,000 lexical equivalents
A Balanced Approach
Cortex is designed to fill the gap between unwieldy academic taxonomies that produce hurdles for implementation in active applications and sparse production taxonomies that don't cover medical concepts at enough detail. The Cortex taxonomy is efficiently structured for quick and straightforward application to medical content by automated routines and experienced medical indexers, while at the same time being complete enough to cover topics at appropriate levels of granularity.
Connection to Real-World Web Activity
Cortex reflects a unique view into new terminology being used by clinical practitioners both formally and informally, as used in "real world" situations in hospitals and outpatient clinics. The Cortex base of synonyms and other lexical equivalents is continually enhanced by analyzing search query logs and user behavior across dozens of health care information sites.
Connection to Standards
Many of the terms in Cortex can also be found in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) of the National Library of Medicine, offering high levels of interoperability for licensees who want to partner with other content providers.
Examples
Figure 1. Example of the Cortex hierarchical structure surrounding "basal cell carcinoma."
Figure 2. Cortex term record for "basal cell carcinoma" as seen in the Totem taxonomy manager.
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