Rogers J E
BioHealth Information Group, School of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Methods Inf Med. 2006;45(3):267-74.
To review the literature concerning the quality assurance of medical ontologies.
scholar.google.com was searched using the search strings (+ontology +"quality assurance") and (+ontology +"evaluation/evaluating"). Relevant publications were selected by manual review. Other work already familiar to the author, or suggested by other researchers contacted by the author, were included. The papers were analysed for common themes.
Four broad properties of an ontology were identified that may be quality-assured: philosophical validity, compliance with meta-ontological commitments, 'content correctness', and fitness for purpose. Each published methodology addressed only a subset of these properties. 'Content' may be divided into domain knowledge content, and metadata describing either the provenance of domain knowledge content, or relationships between it and lexical information (e.g. for display and retrieval). 'Correctness' (whether of domain knowledge content or metadata) may also be further subdivided into truth, completeness, parsimony and internal consistency.
Understanding of how to assure the quality of ontologies, or evaluate their fitness for specific purposes, is improving but remains poor. A combination of methodologies is required, but tools to support a comprehensive quality assurance programme remain lacking. Perfect quality of an ontology is not provable and may not be desirable: an ontology compliant with all current philosophical theories, following necessary ontological commitments, and with entirely 'correct' content, may be too complex to be directly usable or useful. The extent to which an ontology's fitness for purpose is predicted or influenced by its other properties remains to be determined. Field studies of ontologies in use, including interrater effects, are required.
回顾有关医学本体质量保证的文献。
使用搜索词（+本体 +“质量保证”）和（+本体 +“评估/评价”）在scholar.google.com上进行搜索。通过人工审核选择相关出版物。纳入作者已经熟悉的其他工作，或作者联系的其他研究人员推荐的工作。对这些论文进行共同主题分析。
确定了本体的四个广泛属性，可对其进行质量保证：哲学有效性、符合元本体承诺、“内容正确性”和适用性。每种已发表的方法仅涉及这些属性的一个子集。“内容”可分为领域知识内容，以及描述领域知识内容来源或其与词汇信息之间关系（例如用于显示和检索）的元数据。“正确性”（无论是领域知识内容还是元数据的正确性）也可进一步细分为真实性、完整性、简洁性和内部一致性。
对如何确保本体质量或评估其对特定目的的适用性的理解正在提高，但仍然不足。需要多种方法相结合，但仍缺乏支持全面质量保证计划的工具。本体的完美质量是无法证明的，也可能不是必需的：一个符合所有当前哲学理论、遵循必要的本体承诺且具有完全“正确”内容的本体可能过于复杂，无法直接使用或发挥作用。本体的适用性在多大程度上由其其他属性预测或影响仍有待确定。需要对实际使用中的本体进行实地研究，包括评分者间效应。
