" Clinical guidelines are important means to improve quality of health care while limiting cost and supporting the medical staff. They are written as free text with tables and figures. Transforming them into a formal, computer-processable representation is a difficult task requiring both computer scientist skills and medical knowledge. To bridge this gap, we designed an intermediate representation (or ontology) which serves as a mediator between the original text and different formal guideline representations. It is easier to use than the latter, structures the original prose and helps to spot missing information and contradictions. In this paper we describe the representation and a practical evaluation thereof through the modelling of a real-world clinical guideline. "

" The goal of the study described in this research paper is the assessment of a recently developed intermediate representation language, called MHB (Many-Headed Bridge), as an intermediate step within the clinical guidelines formalisation process. We qualitatively assess (1) whether it makes easier the formalisation of the guideline and, (2) to which degree MHB covers written text guideline features. For the assessment, we apply a multi-step formalisation process. In this practical approach, we have based our work on the CBO evidence-based clinical guideline for the treatment of the breast carcinoma. "

" Clinical guidelines become more and more important as a means to improve the quality of care by supporting the medical staff. Modeling guidelines in a computer-processable form is a prerequisite for various computer applications, to improve the quality of guidelines and to support their application. However, transforming the original text into a formal guideline representation is a difficult task requiring both computer scientist skills and medical knowledge. To bridge this gap, we designed an intermediate representation named MHB. "