The benefits of an ontological patient model in clinical decision-support
Austin M., Kelly M., Brady M.
In this paper we discuss an application integrating an ontological data model with an argumentation-based decision-support system, showing how the combination of leading technologies OWL, SPARQL and Jena can be used to achieve this. In the context of improving a decision support tool that is currently being trialled live in a clinical environment, we describe quantitatively how the incorporation of an ontology leads to an improvement over the existing software, highlighting the benefits of incorporating an ontology in medical applications. Data and clinical feedback is being collected from a live trial at the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford, where we are able to test the original decision support tool, but also the ontology driven version, and thus will be able to demonstrate that any quantitative improvements in the efficacy of the software are a product of the ontological data model alone. Copyright © 2008.