Authors:
Tara Sampalli
1
;
Michael Shepherd
2
and
Jack Duffy
2
Affiliations:
1
Capital Health, Canada
;
2
Dalhousie University, Canada
Keyword(s):
Ontologies for complex chronic conditions.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cardiovascular Technologies
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
;
Computing and Telecommunications in Cardiology
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Health Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Integration/Interoperability
;
Interoperability
;
Knowledge Management
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Medical and Nursing Informatics
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Semantic Interoperability
;
Sensor Networks
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Society, e-Business and e-Government
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software and Architectures
;
Symbolic Systems
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
Abstract:
Complex and chronic health conditions have domain knowledge that is multidisciplinary, inconsistent, non-standardized and poorly categorized making them heterogeneous. Consequently, challenges for collaborative care management are widely prevalent due to lack of interoperability. Ontologies have come to the forefront as effective method to improve interoperability in a domain due to their ability to enable higher levels of specification. The primary objective of this study was to develop, test and evaluate a model and a methodology for creating ontologies in heterogeneous domains of complex conditions, an area where there is great paucity for research. The methodology in this research applied a two-staged approach for enabling interoperability in the heterogeneous domain of two complex chronic health conditions, namely, multiple chemical sensitivity and chronic pain. Four hundred and eight and three hundred forty five multidisciplinary concepts were specified in the profile ontologie
s for multiple chemical sensitivity and chronic pain. A testing and an evaluation process conducted in this research demonstrated that a high percentage of the multidisciplinary clinicians (>80%) agreed on the overall usefulness of the ontologies in improving the collaborative environment. The results from the research are promising in terms of the potential applications of ontologies in heterogeneous knowledge domains.
(More)