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The Business Case for Large-Scale Ontology Projects: Are we at a tipping point?

This article explores the growing need for large-scale ontology projects in healthcare, highlighting their potential impact on patient safety, data integration, and clinical research. It discusses the changing healthcare landscape, legislative mandates, and positive signs seen in the industry. The article also identifies areas in medical practice where ontologies are urgently needed.

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The Business Case for Large-Scale Ontology Projects: Are we at a tipping point?

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  1. The Business Case for Large-Scale Ontology Projects: Are we at a tipping point? Mark A. Musen, M.D., Ph.D. Stanford Medical Informatics Stanford University

  2. Medicine boasts a great tradition of work in controlled terminology 724 Unspecified disorders of the back 724.0 Spinal stenosis, other than cervical 724.00 Spinal stenosis, unspecified region 724.01 Spinal stenosis, thoracic region 724.02 Spinal stenosis, lumbar region 724.09 Spinal stenosis, other 724.1 Pain in thoracic spine 724.2 Lumbago 724.3 Sciatica 724.4 Thoracic or lumbosacral neuritis 724.5 Backache, unspecified 724.6 Disorders of sacrum 724.7 Disorders of coccyx 724.70 Unspecified disorder of coccyx 724.71 Hypermobility of coccyx 724.71 Coccygodynia 724.8 Other symptoms referable to back 724.9 Other unspecified back disorders

  3. In the past, most emphasis has been on form, not content • HL7 standard addressed message structure • Arden Syntax for medical logic modules standardized processes but was silent about the data being processed • The most popular tutorial at the annual AMIA meeting reamins one on XML

  4. The world is changing—and ontologies are now essential • Widespread legislative mandate for computer-based physician order entry (CPOE) to promote patient safety • Recognition that semantic data integration helped track down SARS and may be essential for combating bio-terrorism • The advent of high-throughput techniques in biology has led to more data than anyone knows how to analyze

  5. Some very positive signs • Companies such as Apelon are marketing description logic directly to health-care organizations • The caBIG initiative from NCI is bringing ontologies to the masses (at least to the nation’s cancer centers) • Every NIH institute know wants to create its own ontology

  6. : NCI has pioneered the use of distributed ontology editing

  7. Lots of places in medical practice where ontologies are urgently needed • Patient problems (e.g., “chest pain”, “shortness of breath”, “abnormal skin lesions”) • Best practices and clinical guidelines • Repositories of clinical trials for archiving negative results and adverse reactions • Pharmacogenomics and genomic medicine

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