NPHL Thesaurus

The former Health Development Agency (HDA), Public Health Observatories (PHOs) and National electronic Library for Health team developed a unified National Public Health Language (NPHL) to improve searching and retrieval on our websites and databases, and facilitate interoperability between websites. The first version of the NPHL launched in December 2004.

The NPHL is the result of integrating the HDA's Public Health Information Thesaurus with the PHO’s Public Health Information Tagging System (PHITS), which are no longer active. View the National Public Health Language Thesaurus.

NICE has developed its own taxonomy. It covers

• diseases
• illnesses and conditions
• treatments and procedures
• public health
• settings
• population groups
• health specialties