This paper describes an automated procedure for morphosemantic analysis and semantic interpretation of medical compound word forms ending in -ITIS. The requirements for morphosemantic analysis of -ITIS forms include : a) semantic classification of morphosemantic constituents forming -ITIS word forms, b) establishment of morphosemantic distribution patterns occurring in -ITIS forms, c) preparation of paraphrasing rules.

A procedure for automated indexing of pathology diagnostic reports at the National Institutes of Health is described. Diagnostic statements in medical English are encoded by computer into the Systematized Nomenclature of Pathology (SNOP). SNOP is a structured indexing language constructed by pathologists for manual indexing. It is of interest that effective automatic encoding can be based upon an existing vocabulary and code designed for manual methods. Morphosyntactic analysis, a simple syntax analysis, matching of dictionary entries consisting of several words, and synonym substitutions are techniques utilized.

An English to Spanish translation procedure and its associated dictionaries were developed and implemented for the 1,426 terms of the morphology section of the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology. Morphological substitutions and respefling rules permit translation of most of the ICD—O vocabulary composed of Latin and Greek derived terms, which are cognate in the source and target languages, without the construction of a large word lexicon.A fairly simple classification of words which could be implemented by recognition of terminal morphemes, and which classifies them both syntactically and semantically served as an adequate basis for translation, and sheds some light on the linguistic structure of this type of complex noun phrase seen universally in medical writings and communications. A set of 17 reduction-transformation rules based on the word classification provide syntactic control of the translation process.

This review article presents principles and problems of automated processing of medical language data. Work on automated processing of information in medical language is surveyed. References and a bibliography are provided as an introduction to the field.