Clinical terminology server
# Clinical terminology server

A clinical terminology server is a terminology server, which contains and provides access to clinical terminology.

## Background

The first generic description of general terminology servers per se was produced by the European GALEN Project. Rector et al. outline the functional attributes of the GALEN terminology server.

A clinical terminology server provides the following services to client applications:

* management of external references
* management of internal representations
* mapping natural language to concepts and vv
* mapping concepts to medical classification schemes
* management of extrinsic information

The main purpose of a clinical terminology server is to allow the consistent and comparable entry of clinical data, e.g. patient observations, findings and events.

