Conférence pour une
infrastructure
terminologique en Europe

Conferencia para una infraestructura terminol�gica en Europa

Conference for a terminology
infrastructure in Europe

Paris, 13-14-15/03/2000
Maison de l'UNESCO, Salle XI
7, place de Fontenoy
75007 PARIS

The Finnish social security system is based on the idea of welfare state. Its core features include the broad coverage of social security, universal, equal public services for all and income transfer systems, a sufficient level of social security and the decentralisation of welfare service provision. The main responsibility in organising services lies on the municipalities. The principle of the welfare state stresses universality as a means of preventing the exclusion of the individual and of creating equal opportunities for all. The social security objectives are, as far as possible, achieved by means of preventive work, social assistance and social and health services. Social security in Finland will continue to depend to a great extent on the public sector supplemented by the developing and diversifying services of the private sector.

This is the starting point of upbringing the discussion of the need of terminological services to the national level in Finland. The idea of information society has also been adopted widely in the discussion. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Health has launched its IT strategy in 1996. It was followed by a ministerial working group on seamless service chains.

Information technology has indeed affected tremendously the terms used in the discussion of service provision. Seamless service chain, network, client, patient, care and service as well as service organiser, service provider and organisation unit have been concepts discussed rather lively during the last few years, even for several times. This means both a need for defining new concepts and creating new terms, but also a need for creating a platform to co-ordinate this work.

STAKES started the terminological work in 1992-1993. At that time it was considered important to define concepts for the purposes of the reorganisation of client and patient. This starting period made the terminological method known to over 200 welfare and health professionals all over the country, participating in the documentation project. When it was finished, new challenges emerged. A more precise demand for standardising applications used in the social and health client work created new projects. As a result of one of them, a new terminological project was launched, this time directed towards developing concepts for IT applications. The results of these projects have been documented in Finnish in the STAKES publication series. Over 200 basic concepts in total have been defined and over 400 concepts have been discussed in the processes.

In the framework of a major IT development project, the so called Macro Pilot which started in 1998, a report was produced on how to make use of terminological work in defining concepts related to service databases.

With these projects STAKES has reached the status of an established and accepted co-ordinator of terminological work in the field of welfare and health IT. This in turn has created the project now under work: internet based term service to be opened in the STAKES server during spring 2000, free of charge. With this service we hope to multiply the users of terms and concepts, collect local and regional practices for evaluation, push the discussion further and disseminate information on best practices. The world of welfare and health IT changes so rapidly that the traditional method of defining concepts has to be re-evaluated and maybe supplemented with some other means of producing terms and concepts.

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