Semantic methods are indispensable when diagnoses and procedures are coded automatically. It is not enough to include words with the same meaning in tables of synonyms (or words with similar meaning in thesauri), as the synonymity (or similarity) of words is only the beginning of the problems arising from the content analysis of words. Thus words always contain several implicit meanings that have to be regarded not as synonyms, but as complementary concepts.

For instance the word “radius” implies the content “bone” and “forearm”, these concepts are not synonyms of “radius”, instead they have another, clearly definable relationship: “bone” can be regarded as the semantic type of “radius” and “forearm” as the implicit information regarding body region. Via “forearm”, “radius” further implies “upper limb” and “limb”. Implied meanings like this are a key factor in assessment and coding. It must be possible for the implied relationships to be presented in a way that is simple, clearly arranged, systematic and easily readable by people and computers. This is comprehensively solved for medical language with Semfinder.