Health Thesaurus

"The 7th edition of the Health Thesaurus has been developed by the Departmental Library for use in all areas of the Department of Health. The Health Thesaurus is a living working tool which assists consistency and subject retrieval of health concepts. By standardising concepts to one single subject heading, the Thesaurus forms the basis for a common terminology within the Department.

MeSH (medical Subject Headings) produced by the US National Library of Medicine has been used as the basis of the medical terms and the corresponding hierarchical schedules in the Health Thesaurus. We are very grateful for their permission to use MeSH in this way. For this edition 2004 MeSH has been used. Within the Department the Thesaurus has been used for the subject metadata element for the Departmental internet, to structure the relationship of terms in the Senior's Portal consumer website, to provide the automatic match of search terms for consumer health access in the HealthInsite gateway, and to give quality subject retrieval in the Library catalogue - which in turn allows easier access to Departmental and other publications. The Thesaurus is also used by a number of health related organisations in Australia. The Thesaurus can be used for classification or indexing of all types of documents and files, from personal files to corporate databases, and hence to assist in retrieval of corporate information. It is also used in Document management and Record management systems."