Abstract

Objective

The study sought to create an integrated vocabulary system that addresses the lack of standardized health terminology in gender and sexual orientation.

Materials and Methods

We evaluated computational efficiency, coverage, query-based term tagging, randomly selected term tagging, and mappings to existing terminology systems (including ICD (International Classification of Diseases), DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ), SNOMED (Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine), MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), and National Cancer Institute Thesaurus).

Results

We published version 2 of the Gender, Sex, and Sexual Orientation (GSSO) ontology with over 10 000 entries with definitions, a readable hierarchy system, and over 14 000 database mappings. Over 70% of terms had no mapping in any other available ontology.

Discussion

We created the GSSO and made it publicly available on the National Center for Biomedical Ontology BioPortal and on GitHub. It includes clarifications on over 200 slang terms, 190 pronouns with linked example usages, and over 200 nonbinary and culturally specific gender identities.

Conclusions

Gender and sexual orientation continue to represent crucial areas of medical practice and research with evolving terminology. The GSSO helps address this gap by providing a centralized data resource.

This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://dbpia.nl.go.kr/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
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