Formal knowledge representations applied to the semantic interoperability of clinical terminologies

Abstract

An ongoing research is presented, whose purpose is to demonstrate by means of an experiment, that ontological approaches may be better than those of a purely linguistic character for the purposes of semantic interoperability. The methodology involves the use of lexical and structural methods to combine, map, align and integrate clinical terminologies, under the linguistic approach and under the ontological approach. A qualitative analysis of the data is expected, by measuring the degree of efficiency of each approach to provide integration between clinical terminologies. Theoretical contributions are expected to allow: i) the discovery and distinction of the ontological and epistemic aspects inherent to clinical terminologies, ii) the epistemic challenges to semantic interoperability and iii) the relevance of the ontological approach to mitigate such problems. Ultimately, it is expected to obtain a computational ontology of integration between SNOMED CT and CID in the obstetric scope, to be publicly distributed, in an open and documented format.