What's in a code? Towards a formal account of the relation of ontologies and coding systems.

Terminologies are increasingly based on "ontologies" developed in description logics and related languages such as the new Web Ontology Language, OWL. The use of description logic has been expected to reduce ambiguity and make it easier determine logical equivalence, deal with negation, and specify EHRs. However, this promise has not been fully realised: in part because early description logics were relatively inexpressive, in part, because the relation between coding systems, EHRs, and ontologies expressed in description logics has not been fully understood. This paper presents a unifying approach using the expressive formalisms available in the latest version of OWL, OWL 1.1.