Health and medicine are the science and practice of diagnosing, preventing and treating disease. It includes the fields of medical practice, immunology, oncology, ophthalmology, nutrition, public health and psychiatry.

This section covers:

International standards and resources

The United States National Library of Medicine hosts several medical terminology databases(Opens in a new tab/window) that provide an authoritative source for biomedical terminologies, including naming of diseases.

Note: Ignore capitalisation of terms used in these vocabularies, as this does not apply in normal writing.

The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry Compendium of terminology and nomenclature of properties in clinical laboratory sciences(Opens in a new tab/window) (‘Silver Book’) provides standardised terminology for clinical sciences, but is not available online.

Australian conventions and resources

Australian conventions generally follow international standards.