The present invention provides a method for implementing a medical informatics system. The method comprises the step of creating one or more named medical objects having attributes and behaviours, each object being implemented as an object in an object oriented programming paradigm, a function in a functional programming paradigm or an equivalent entity in a hybrid functional/object oriented programming paradigm, wherein the or each medical object name is derived from an algorithmic transformation of a description key assigned to a corresponding medical concept in a medical coding or classification system into an explicit health code, the named medical object having the attributes and behaviours of the corresponding medical concept, the composition of explicit health codes and medical objects derived therefrom being suitable for computer representation of medical narratives.