Designing Common User-Based Ontologies to Support Clinical Guideline Development

Abstract

In order to support intense information synthesis for clinical guideline (CG) development the knowledge acquisition among a vast group of clinical experts is essential for well-defined representation between domain-specific knowledge and the subsequent development of CGs. However, the necessity to formalize the knowledge produced by clinical experts can be difficult to achieve since the development process performed on CGs relies heavily on the Cognitive Models of the individual that are often based on technical and procedural knowledge. To improve the coverage and representation provided on CGs much of these forms of knowledge can be combined and presented in a common computer interpretable format to support improvement to CGs. The focus of this study is on the acquisition of expert’s vast clinical knowledge on a computer interpretable Common Ontology for CG development. This study views the role of the clinical expert and the users' cognitive capabilities as an essential source of a common ontology. To justify the proposal, the research applies a preliminary case study using cardiovascular disease as an example extracted from a corpus of CGs to establish the completeness, feasibility and clarity of the knowledge represented in CGs.