Standards and biomedical terminologies: the CEN TC 251 and ISO TC 215 categorial structures. A step towards increased interoperability.

Among different biomedical terminologies standardisation strategies the European Standard Body CEN TC 251 followed by the ISO TC 215 have stated that it was not possible to convince the different European or international member states using different national languages to agree on a reference clinical terminology or to standardise a detailed language independent biomedical ontology. Since 1990, they have developed an approach named categorial structure as a step standardising only the terminologies model structure. The methodology and the review of the different existing categorial structures are presented as a step towards increased interoperability between biomedical terminologies thanks to conformity to a minimum set of ontological requirements.