ISO 17115:2020

Overview

ISO 17115:2020 - Health informatics: Representation of categorial structures of terminology (CatStructure) defines core concepts and modelling constructs for formal concept representation systems in healthcare. The standard specifies how to represent concepts, characteristics and the minimal domain constraints needed to describe the organisation and content of terminological systems. ISO 17115:2020 is intended primarily for computer‑based applications (for example, EHRs and decision‑support systems) and supports semantic interoperability and meaningful exchange of health information. It is not intended as a clinical classification for bedside use.

Key Topics

• Fundamental concepts: precise definitions for concept, concept system, categorial structure, generic concept, type of characteristic, and characteristic to ensure consistent modelling vocabularies.
• Relations between concepts: formalization of common relations used in terminologies, including generic (is‑a) relations, partitive (whole‑part) relations, hierarchical relations (generic or partitive), associative relations, and semantic links (directed associative or partitive links).
• Domain constraints: rules that specify which characteristics are sanctioned for specializing a concept within a subject field (e.g., permissible attributes and link types).
• Categorial structure description: guidance on stating the precise goal of a categorial structure, generic concepts, types of characteristics, and generic concept relations to support consistent modelling and reuse.
• Scope limits: explicitly excludes enumeration of axiomatic concepts/semantic links and detailed content of individual terminologies (classifications, nomenclatures, reference terminologies).

Applications

ISO 17115:2020 is geared toward improving interoperability, coherence and maintainability of healthcare terminologies and their use in software systems:

• Designing domain‑specific categorial structures that enable consistent concept modelling across overlapping healthcare domains.
• Guiding the construction and maintenance of formal terminologies, ontologies and reference models used in EHRs, clinical decision support and data warehouses.
• Enabling systematic cross‑referencing and convergence among different terminological systems to support data exchange and secondary use of clinical data.
• Supporting developers of natural language processing and terminology services by providing a consistent framework for concept representation.

Who should use this standard

• Developers of concept representation systems and domain terminologies
• Standards developers and information modellers (ISO/TC 215 stakeholders)
• Knowledge engineers, ontology designers and terminologists
• EHR architects, middleware and data warehouse designers
• Vendors of terminology services and NLP applications

Related standards

• ISO 17117 series (related terms, definitions and characteristics for healthcare terminologies)
• ISO 1087:2019 (terminology principles and definitions)
• Other ISO/EN standards on domain‑specific categorial structures referenced within ISO 17115

Keywords: ISO 17115:2020, CatStructure, health informatics, categorial structure, terminology, concept representation, semantic link, domain constraint, interoperability, EHR.