All good questions, and most of which we are still in the process of
determining. The types of documents are generally project related
documentation (reports, plans, technical information, etc.), but those have
not yet been standardized. We are also in the process of doing business
analysis and user testing to determine the types and amount of metadata we
need. I just know for sure that we will need "subject" or "topic"
descriptors for all of the content. This has currently been narrowed down
to "Technical Area" (i.e. the actual health issue), target populations
(e.g. Newborns), and Expertise Areas (e.g. Monitoring and evaluation), but
all of that is subject to change based on research and user testing.

As for the process to assign terms and the structure of the terms, all of
that is up in the air right now as we have no systems (business or
technological) to implement any of this. In an ideal world flush with
resources, I would be able to get a metadata/vocabulary management tool, as
well as a robust document/content management system that can work together,
as well as integrate with our other data and business intelligence systems
that are being created. There are currently a number of evaluative/business
analysis workstreams moving forward to try and answer some of these
questions. In reality, there is a very good chance a lot of this will need
to be managed through excel and good governance.

The systems and vocabularies will also have to useful worldwide, as 80% of
our employees are located outside of the US (we aren't even talking about
multiple languages right now; that's a problem that is not even worth
considering at this point).

The suggestions everyone has given so far are very helpful and are putting
me on the right track. My hope is to be able to use one of them, or at
least part(s) of them to get to where we need to go.

Hopefully in a few months I will have a good update (and more questions) on
where we are!

Thanks,

Jacob

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 4:55 PM, Kyle Banerjee <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Could you say a bit more about the documents you need to manage, the level
> of specificity you need, how they'll be used, and what process you envision
> to assign terms? If your documents are mostly clinical in nature, SNOMED
> strikes me a good choice, but if you want terminology that could take you
> to related articles in PubMed or your needs aren't mostly clinical, MeSH
> might work better.
>
> It's possible to crosswalk across vocabularies, but the different
> vocabularies are optimized to support different needs so you'll want to
> pick one that's appropriate for your use.
>
> kyle
>
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 11:22 AM, Jacob Ratliff <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I currently work in an International public health non-profit, and we are
> > setting up enterprise wide document management for dealing with Knowledge
> > Management and Information Management issues. Lots of moving pieces, but
> I
> > wanted to get some input on metadata specific to the medical/health
> world.
> > I am looking for some metadata guidance specifically related to the
> > medical/health world. Is anyone using any standard controlled
> vocabularies?
> > Should I be looking into Linked Data? I'm starting off the research phase
> > for all of the metadata, so links to resources and case studies is
> greatly
> > helpful!
> >
> > Bonus points to anything that is international in scope, as over 75% of
> > the employees at my company are non-US based (most of them in Africa).
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Jacob Ratliff
> > Information Architect / UX Specialsit
> > Management Sciences for Health
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
>