The development of medical ontology “HoPRO” (Hospital PRocess Ontology) and the role of ontologies in multimethodological SAD frameworks

Abstract

Recent advances in health informatics combined with system analysis methodologies can supply the techniques and tools to the development of more efficient Hospital Information Systems (HIS) that can be made to exchange data with each other and thus provide a more reliable patient oriented environment. In order to achieve this desired HIS interoperability, it is important to provide a clear understanding of the HIS ecosystem during the analysis and design phase that provides the infrastructure of this ecosystem and leads to the development of HIS, that will be capable of exchanging data within heterogeneous HIS modules. A great improvement towards this solution is to develop a hospital information business process ontology that will provide the infrastructure for a clear understanding of the HIS ecosystem and thus lead to the development of HI Systems that will be able to interpolate efficiently with each other. Ultimately, this creates a new way of thinking about how to approach any problem and identify the solution instituting a novel analysis and design framework in order to provide the ability to study the domain, address the issues that cause the problems and lead to more efficient informational systems and analysis and design methodologies. Such an ontology along with the systems analysis and novel design framework is developed and described here and its value is demonstrated through a case study.