scope:

This European standard defines the characteristics required to synthetically describe the organisation and content of human anatomy within a terminological system. It is intended primarily for use with computer-based applications such as clinical electronic health records, decision support and for various bio-medical research purposes. This European standard will serve to - facilitate the construction of new terminological systems in a regular form which will increase their coherence and expressiveness; - facilitate maintenance of human anatomy within terminological systems; - increase consistency and coherence of existing terminological system; - allow systematic cross-references between items of human anatomy in different types of terminological systems; - facilitate convergence among human anatomy within terminological systems; - make explicit the overlap for human anatomy between different health care domains terminological systems; - provide elements for negotiation about integration of different terminological systems into information systems between the respective developers; - enable the systematic evaluation of human anatomy within terminological systems.