1 Scope
The document aims to
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a) specify the minimal characterizing generic concepts in herbal medicament (3.2) within terminological systems (3.8), that are required for terms used to identify of herbal medicines regulated by medicine regulatory agencies (3.10), and
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b) facilitate the consistency and interoperability of the terms and their designating concepts in terminological systems.
In order to achieve these goals, this document specifies the minimal compositional concept representation of herbal medicament for use in terminological systems (3.8), while expressing semantic links and characterizing categories for formal definitions, with a set of domain constraints in the subject field[6] [7].
Herbal medicaments
(3.2) can be classified into
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1) single herbal medicament (SHM), and
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2) herbal medicament composed of several kinds of SHM.
NOTE Single herbal medicament is composed of only one herbal medicament. Herbal medicament composed of several kinds of SHMs is conventionally called “formula.” This document is not intended to include the mixture of formulae.
The specific intended use of this compositional concept representation is to
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— provide a well-structured backbone for terminological systems,
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— clarify the synonymy, homonymy and polysemy across different clinical specialties and terminological resources,
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— promote meaningful exchange of information among different terminological systems,
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— promote consistency and interoperability or re-use of terms among different terminological systems,
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— facilitate the representation of herbal medicines in a manner suitable for computer processing,
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— support developers and maintainers of terminological resources (3.7) to facilitate conformance,
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— support knowledge management on herbal medicines with facilitating analysis of concerned data, and
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— support the reduction of confusion in trade and of health hazard in consequence.
The following topics are out of scope for this document:
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— any implementation models or database schemas, and manufacturing models;
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— any models or frameworks for quality control, and models for chemical and physical characteristics;
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— any individual pharmaceutical or medicinal products, and combinations use with modern medicines.