OnticHealth

Models, ontologies and resourcesin support oh Healthcare Information may be stored or shared in one of many natural languages or one of millions of “structured” forms that are typically defined in data or message “schema” – schema describe the structure of information. Natural languages are, by their nature, imprecise and dependent on deep shared context to understand meaning. Structured forms trade flexibility for a predictable structure that can be automated and precise if the meaning is clear. Yet that meaning typically falls back on natural language definitions that depend on programmers correctly interpreting the meaning encoded in the structure – an expensive and risk prone process. Data schema are, by their nature, tuned to the applications and use cases for which they are designed. They frequently combine or “conflate” diverse concepts into an efficient data storage or message structures, that works for their design purpose which incorporates specific assumptions, but becomes confusing or misleading when that same information is needed for other purposes, or other stakeholders, in other formats. The assumptions inherent in a schema design are often unstated or even inconsistent. Ontologies are increasingly being used to establish a consistent and formal basis for meaning such that the same “facts” can be interpreted correctly regardless of the structure, terminology, technology or schema that encodes them. For this vision to be realized the various schema need to be mapped to a common conceptual model expressed in an ontology. What has proved challenging in this approach is establishing common concepts that are both sufficiently broad and sufficiently precise to federate these different data structures. Sometimes the same conflation of concepts that “polluted” data schema creep into supporting ontologies – either for the sake of efficiency, limits imposed by the ontology language, or the influence of legacy. For this reason, the search or appropriate “linking concepts” is central to a broad-based information federation, sharing or analytics requirement. This project will concepts which have proved valuable as essential linking concepts. Two such concepts are what we call “situations” and “statements”. These concepts provide a separation of concerns between the world as we conceive it and “statements” about that conceived world. Statements include all forms of communications and recorded information – anything that is “said about” the world. Situations are conditions of the world it’s self; sets of relationships and properties that, together, comprise a meaningful topic for statements. In more formal language, statements are epistemological (about what we know or communicate) where as situations are ontological (about the world).