SEMANTIC SEARCH

An ONTOLOGY is a WORDY FRAMEWORK for using a LEXICON, but what does all that mean?

SEMANTIC means relating to meaning.  So then SEMANTIC SEARCH means “search for meaning”.

The “search for meaning” is especially important.

DynaMed has the mission to provide the most useful information to health care professionals at the point of care.  DynaMed uses a conventional search engine which is based on indexing words used in the database, adding synonyms in a thesaurus, and using the resulting index to support searches.

DynaMed Plus uses a SEMANTIC SEARCH. The concepts are indexed, capturing the meanings of the words and phrases used in the database.  Concept mapping goes far beyond synonyms and search results are more relevant, supporting faster time to answer, and the user is literally “searching for meaning”

When communicating with others a SEMANTIC SEARCH could also be especially helpful. If you think the communication is not going well see if you can slow down, back up, and determine the meaning within or behind what you are having trouble understanding or communicating.

And in the larger-than-life sense “search for meaning” has a whole other meaning, but that is not SEMANTICS (though a common phrase would be to say this is just SEMANTICS). Going there would be closer to epistemology than ONTOLOGY.

I could think about simpler things, like should we list United Kingdom guidelines separately from European guidelines, but BREXIT is a new entry to my LEXICON.