Ontology‐Based Smart Medical Solutions

Abstract

E-Health systems play a significant role in the well-being of individuals, be it as medical solutions or for health care towards the everyday well-being of individuals. New models and methods continue to be developed to produce safer health care environments. The rapid growth in the use of such approaches and technologies in medical fields has generated new opportunities for the improvement of emerging applications. However, huge challenges are yet to be resolved in order to develop consistent, suitable, safe, flexible, and power-efficient systems fit for medical needs. The development of smart medical systems and services for the health sector has become a multidisciplinary effort involving various key disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Human–Computer Interaction, Information Technology, Data Mining, Big Data Analysis, Statistics, and Deep Learning. Smart medical solutions provide opportunities to enhance the delivery of health services, improve patient experience, and advance integrated health care. Efforts to represent knowledge efficiently have been essential to progress in various aspects of medical informatics. In particular, knowledge-based systems can improve medical systems through rule-based, case-based, and model-based reasoning through intelligent computing methods. Computational means, especially semantic technologies such as ontology-based approaches, play a central part in achieving the development of effective smart medical solutions. This special issue on “Ontology-Based Smart Medical Solutions,” in the general topic area of “e-Health and Staying Smarter,” was organized for the prestigious Wiley journal “Expert Systems: The Journal of Knowledge Engineering.” The issue was primarily intended for revised and substantially extended versions of selected papers presented at the 13th IEEE International Workshop on E-Health Systems and Web Technologies (ESAS 2018) which was organized in Tokyo, Japan. Papers covering state-of-the-art research in knowledge engineering in relation to smart medical solutions were reviewed in this special issue. The guest editors of this special issue are grateful to the authors of all papers submitted for their contributions and, to the following reviewers, for their perceptive and comprehensive reviews that allowed a very rigorous and complete review process: ABIYEV, Rahib; ANELLI, Vito Walter; ANIKEEV, Maxim; BELLI, Fevzi; BRANCO, Paula; BULUZ, Başak; BURSA, Okan; CAN, Özgü; CIMATO, Stelvio; DOĞDU, Erdogan; ERDUR, Rıza Cenk; FERRANDEZ, Jose; FREITAS, Alberto; GARRIGOS, Javier; JAIN, Divya; KANTARCI, Burak; KÖSE, Mehtap; KUT, Alp; NABIZADEH, Amir Hossein; OLCA, Emre; ÖZACAR, Tuğba; ÖZTÜRK, Övünç; PHAM, Phu; RAFIEIPOUR, Moslem; RATRE, Avinash; SANTUR, Yunus; SHEKHAWAT, Rajveer; SONG, Houbing; SONG, Jiayun; TAÇYILDIZ, Özgü; TOYGAR, Önsen; ÜNALIR, Murat Osman; YILMAZER, Dilek; ZHANG, Yudong; ZONTUL, Metin. The guest editors are greatly indebted to the EiC Jon G. Hall for his guidance in the preparation of this special issue as well as during the paper review process. The editorial assistant Albert Abdon's readiness to help out whenever needed was appreciated.