Development of the ontology using a problem-driven approach: in the context of traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis

Abstract

<p>Traditional approach of ontology building interconnects people, place, objects and activities to represent the domain knowledge. It assumes that the knowledge rules in the ontology remains the same in any situations. However, in medicine domain, physicians always base on the problem situations to select the appropriate medical theories to perform diagnosis. So, the ontology developed with the traditional approach may not be suitable to be used as a knowledge base. Thus, a problem-driven approach of ontology building is proposed in order to capture the diagnostic knowledge and rules dynamically with the problem situations. This study applied the human cognitive model of problem solving and used the UMLS and OWL/SWRL to develop the traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis ontology. Since the ontology is built by interconnecting of people and knowledge on diagnostic decision making, it can be used as a knowledge base for medical diagnosis.</p>