Ontology for Task-Based Clinical Guidelines and the Theory of Granular Partitions

The theory of granular partitions (TGP) is a new approach to the understanding of ontologies and other classificatory systems. The paper explores the use of this new theory in the treatment of task-based clinical guidelines as a means for better understanding the relations between different clinical tasks, both within the framework of a single guideline and between related guidelines. We used as our starting point a DAML+OIL-based ontology for the WHO guideline for hypertension management, comparing this with related guidelines and attempting to show that TGP provides a flexible and highly expressive basis for the manipulation of ontologies of a sort which might be useful in providing more adequate Computer Interpretable Guideline Models (CIGMs) in the future.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: AIME
• Authors: Anand Kumar, Barry Smith
• Keywords: AIME 2003, Artificial Intelligence, Guideline, Related Guidelines, Task-based Clinical Guidelines