A multi-lingual architecture for building a normalised conceptual representation from medical language

The overall goal of MENELAS is to provide better access to the information contained in natural language patient discharge summaries (PDSs), through the design and implementation of a prototype able to analyse medical texts. The approach taken by MENELAS is based on the following key principles: (i) to maximise the usefulness of natural language analysis and the usability of its results, the output of natural language analysis must be a normalised conceptual representation of medical information; and (ii) to maximise the reuse of resources, language analysis should be domain-independent and conceptual representation should be language-independent. This paper discusses the results obtained and the issues raised when implementing these principles during the project.