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- The NCBO (National Centre for Biomedical Ontology) OCI - the ontology of clinical investigation home page; visual schematic;
- The OBO - Open Biomedical Ontologies home page; the OBO Foundry (where the actual ontologies are); most of these appear to be 'ontologies of reality', although the following ones seem to be about information:
o Ontology for biomedical investigations (OBI)
o Evidence codes - The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) home page (an ontology of reality), incorporating:
o SNAP, an ontology of substantial entities, tropes (their qualities and functions) and spatial regions
o SPAN, an ontology of process, temporal and spatio-temporal regions
o The paper "Biodynamic Ontology: Applying BFO in the Biomedical Domain" by Grenon, Smith and Goldberg is a good introduction to BFO in the biomedical domain. #Grenon2004
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The openEHR Reference Model includes an information model which defines many classes, but the . The information model, although relatively basic with respect to some of the ontologies in the biomedical space, nevertheless contains ontological commitments of its own - i.e. formal descriptions of certain real-world concepts relating to recorded health information. The part of the model of most ontological interest is the 'Entry' part, which is formally specified in the openEHR EHR Information Model; it can also be seen online as detailed UML. A summarised UML form of the Entry types in openEHR is illustrated below.
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Of the biomedical ontologies mentioned above, the OBI and the OCI appear to be closest in purpose. No proper study of these has yet been made with respect to openEHR. There is also OCRe, which is also broadly under the auspices of the NCBO, and which in the long run may merge with OBI and OCI.
The openEHR Archetypes
In the openEHR approach, most description of the contents of recorded health information is left to archetypes (openEHR FAQ). An archetype can be thought of as a model of some clinical content (e.g. what is recorded in a urinalysis, or an ante-natal visit), expressed in a constraint formalism known as ADL (which has some similarities to OWL). Over 200 archetypes have been defined during NHS projects, Australian GP projects, and openEHR activities (openEHR archetypes page). To go straight to the point, an ontological way of looking at the archetypes that exist is the mindmap view. The structure of each archetype can be viewed by clicking on a node in this view. Another way to view archetypes is with the ADL workbench tool, and with various archetype editors. Example archetypes: Microbial lab observations; Adverse reaction; Examination of named body part.
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