Taxonomy Software for New NHS Website Helps Patients Make Informed Choices

Smartlogic’s taxonomy software Semaphore will provide semantic searching for the first time on a nationwide Government website, NHS Choices.

[ClickPress, Tue Aug 17 2010] NHS Choices, (http://www.nhs.uk) the new NHS website aimed at providing patients with their choices about their healthcare, will provide semantic web searching for the first time on a nationwide Government-run website.

The NHS appointed UK taxonomy software company, Smartlogic, to provide automatic content classification of information on the website as well as to power an exceptional user experience. Semaphore is being used in conjunction with the Google Search Appliance, the combined system delivering a world class health information website.

The advanced web content classification capabilities in Semaphore mean that all the information on the new website is automatically tagged with accurate, standardised labels (aka metadata), so when a patient searches for information relating to his or her illness, they are delivered with only relevant, topical information in context.

Smartlogic’s CEO, Jeremy Bentley, says of the project, “NHS Choices aims to provide a very contextual user experience to people who are concerned about their health and need information about it. Contextual, semantic search improves the results we get back from a search term. If you typed in, for example “ME”, instead of giving you a list of all the pages that contain the two letters M, E, Semaphore delivers the information you really need about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

It also groups related content together into a parcel, so you’ll see Causes of ME, Symptoms of ME – even other related terms, such as Yuppie Flu. Not everyone refers to an illness by the same term, so by making this a semantic website, patients are better able to find the information they need, and make informed choices.”

More information about Smartlogic’s semantic search and taxonomy software can be found at www.smartlogic.com.

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About Smartlogic – www.smartlogic.com

Smartlogic are the UK-based creators of Semaphore, a semantic search platform that adds advanced content classification capabilities to information management systems.

Adopting a semantic content classification approach to information management delivers findability, improves the accuracy and efficacy of applying metadata and enables content integration across disparate sources.

Clients include NASA, The National Health Service, ABN Amro, Bank of America and The Office of Public Sector Information.

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