Interpretation of an international terminology standard in the development of a logic-based compositional terminology

Purpose
Version 1.0 of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) is a logic-based compositional terminology. International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 18104:2003 Health Informatics—Integration of a reference terminology model for nursing is an international standard to support the development, testing and implementation of nursing terminologies.

Methods
This study examines how ISO 18104:2003 has been interpreted in the development of ICNP® Version 1.0 by identifying mappings between ICNP® and the ISO standard. Representations of diagnostic and interventional statements within ICNP® are also analyzed according to the requirements mandated by the ISO standard.

Results
All structural components of ISO 18104:2003 i.e. semantic categories, semantic domains, qualifiers and semantic links are represented either directly or in interpreted form within ICNP®. The formal representations within ICNP® of diagnostic and interventional statements meet the requirement of the ISO standard.

Conclusions
The findings of this study demonstrate that ICNP® Version 1.0 conforms to ISO 18104:2003. More importantly perhaps, this study provides practical examples of how components of a terminology standard might be interpreted and it examines how such a standard might be used to support the definition of high-level schemata in developing logic-based compositional terminologies.