Inductive Design and Testing of a Performance Ontology for Mobile Emergency Medical Services

Abstract

Ontology provides an overarching framework and vocabulary for describing system components and relationships. As such, they represent a means to devise, analyze and compare information systems. This research investigates the development of a software-based ontology within the context of a rural wireless emergency medical (EMS) services. Wireless EMS has developed in response to the unprecedented growth of wireless as a means to communicate in emergency situations. Using an inductive, field-based approach, this study devises and tests a new ontology-based framework for wireless emergency response in rural Minnesota. The ontology is developed by integrating concepts and findings from in-depth field reviews in Minnesota into an ontological software originating out of bioinformatics. This software, Protg 2000, is an open source ontological software system developed by Stanford University’s Medical Informatics group. Using Protg 2000, the authors developed a wireless EMS ontological framework populated by the real data gathered from field interviews and related data collection. This EMS framework distinguishes between classes of systems, instances within the classes, and the relationships among classes and instances. The next step in the research involved conducting a simulation of performance using a sample of case study data and demonstrated important linkages among system classes. It is expected that use of such performance ontology will assist researchers and program managers with identifying basic problems in terms of technical and non-technical rural EMS issues, as well as possible patterns of inconsistency or discrepancies across EMS deployments.