Mapping the Terms of Medicinal Material and Formula Classification to International Standard Terminology

Abstract

The current study aims to analyze the acceptance of International Standard Terminology (IST) related to herbs and formulas used in Korea. It also intends to examine limitations of each term source by linking texts for herbal medicine research and formula research used in schools of oriental medicine with medicinal substance-formula classification names within the IST framework. This study examined 64 medicinal classification names of IST, including synonyms, 41 formula classification names, 65 classification names of “Herbal Medicine Study,” 89 medicinal classification names of “Shins Clinical Herbal Medicine Study,” and lastly 83 formula classification names of “Formula Study.” Data on their chief virtue, efficacy and characteristics as medicinal substances were extracted from their definitions, and such data were used to perform Chinese character-English mapping using the IST. The outcomes of the mapping were then analyzed in terms of both lexical matching and semantic matching. In terms of classification names for medicinal substances, “Herbal Medicine Study” had 60.0% lexical matching, whereas “Shins Clinical Herbal Medicine Study” had 48.3% lexical matching. When semantic matching was also applied, “Herbal Medicine Study” showed a value of 87.7% and “Shins Clinical Herbal Medicine Study” 74.2%. In terms of formula classification names, lexical matching was 28.9% of 83 subjects, and when semantic matching was also considered, the value was 30.1%. When the conceptual elements of this study were applied, some IST terms that are classified with other codes were found to be conceptually consistent, and some terms were not accepted due to different depths in the classification systems of each source.