Ramzan Asia, Wang Hai, Buckingham Christopher
School of Engineering and Applied Science, Aston University, Birmingham, England. B4 7ET.
Stud Health Technol Inform. 2014;207:290-9.
Clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) often base their knowledge and advice on human expertise. Knowledge representation needs to be in a format that can be easily understood by human users as well as supporting ongoing knowledge engineering, including evolution and consistency of knowledge. This paper reports on the development of an ontology specification for managing knowledge engineering in a CDSS for assessing and managing risks associated with mental-health problems. The Galatean Risk and Safety Tool, GRiST, represents mental-health expertise in the form of a psychological model of classification. The hierarchical structure was directly represented in the machine using an XML document. Functionality of the model and knowledge management were controlled using attributes in the XML nodes, with an accompanying paper manual for specifying how end-user tools should behave when interfacing with the XML. This paper explains the advantages of using the web-ontology language, OWL, as the specification, details some of the issues and problems encountered in translating the psychological model to OWL, and shows how OWL benefits knowledge engineering. The conclusions are that OWL can have an important role in managing complex knowledge domains for systems based on human expertise without impeding the end-users' understanding of the knowledge base. The generic classification model underpinning GRiST makes it applicable to many decision domains and the accompanying OWL specification facilitates its implementation.
临床决策支持系统（CDSSs）通常基于人类专业知识来构建其知识体系并提供建议。知识表示需要采用一种格式，既能让人类用户轻松理解，又能支持持续的知识工程，包括知识的演进和一致性。本文报告了一种本体规范的开发，该规范用于在一个CDSS中管理知识工程，以评估和管理与心理健康问题相关的风险。加拉太风险与安全工具（GRiST）以一种分类心理模型的形式体现心理健康专业知识。其层次结构通过一个XML文档直接在机器中表示。模型的功能和知识管理通过XML节点中的属性进行控制，并配有一份纸质手册，用于规定最终用户工具在与XML交互时应如何运行。本文解释了使用网络本体语言OWL作为规范的优势，详细阐述了将心理模型转换为OWL时遇到的一些问题，并展示了OWL如何有益于知识工程。结论是，OWL在基于人类专业知识的系统中管理复杂知识领域时可以发挥重要作用，同时又不妨碍最终用户对知识库的理解。支撑GRiST的通用分类模型使其适用于许多决策领域，并且随附的OWL规范便于其实施。
