Knowledge representation of traditional Chinese acupuncture points using the UMLS and a terminology model

An escalating global interest in traditional Chinese acupuncture (TCA) demands easy use and reuse of the medical knowledge associated with TCA points, which in turn require appropriate knowledge representation of TCA. A proper knowledge representation generally involves enumeration of conceptual symbols and arrangement of these symbols into some meaningful structure. This study uses the unified medical language system (UMLS) as the source of conceptual symbols and proposes a terminology model as the structure to arrange terms. The purpose is to systematically capture and represent appropriate TCA knowledge in practice. The initial terminology model is refined in an iterative process. The resulting terminology model captures and represents key aspects of TCA knowledge through properly designed model attributes and relations.