Patent ID: 7162465

Claim:
A method of constructing a network of conceptual entities and their relationships, each conceptual entity having associated therewith (i) at least one identifying name comprising at least one word, and (ii) at least one identifying abbreviation; in which data processing means is used to scan at least one database comprising a plurality of text documents, each document referring to a plurality conceptual entities by means of at least one identifying name or at least one identifying abbreviation; wherein conceptual entities in the documents are identified by scanning for abbreviations of conceptual entities in the document; co-occurrences of different conceptual entities in the same document are noted; information is recorded representing the co-occurrences and the number of documents in which they appear; and a network is provided representing relationships between conceptual entities; wherein conceptual entities are also identified in documents by means of scanning for conceptual entity names, and at least some abbreviations are only accepted as representing a reference to a conceptual entity in a given document if the scan reveals that at least one word from one name of the conceptual entity also appears in a suitable part of the given document.