The MeDEA project: supporting coding of medical documents

A description is given of the MeDEA project, which was conceived to assist health operators in the application of coding or indexing directives related to a specific representation scheme (namely coding death certificates and hospital discharge forms with ICD and DRG-like systems). The project was approached in a global manner, since it depends on the solution of very general problems on medical knowledge and its representation, due to the amount of knowledge and the complexity of the relationships concerned. A modular architecture and knowledge-based methods were used. Portability among applications, friendliness, and ease of maintenance were pursued by singling out basic knowledge, task knowledge, and domain knowledge from higher level programs.<
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