H. Gu, Y. Perl, J. Geller, M. Halper and M. Singh, A methodology for Partitioning a Vocabulary Hierarchy into Trees, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 15 77-98, 1999.

Abstract: Controlled medical vocabularies are useful in application areas such as medical information systems and decision-support system. However, such vocabularies are large and complex, and working with them can be daunting. It is important to provide a means for orienting vocabulary designers and users to the vocabulary's contents. We describe a methodology for partitioning a vocabulary based on an IS-A hierarchy into small meaningful pieces. The methodology uses our disciplined modeling framework to refine the IS-A hierarchy according to prescribed rules in a process carried out by a user in conjunction with the computer. The partitioning of the hierarchy implies a partitioning of the vocabulary. We demonstrate the methodology with respect to a complex sample of the MED, an existing medical vocabulary.