Introducing Realist Ontology for the Representation of Adverse Events

The goal of the REMINE project is to build a high performance prediction, detection and monitoring platform for managing Risks against Patient Safety (RAPS). Part of the work involves developing an ontology enabling computer-assisted RAPS decision support in the context of the disease history of a patient as documented in a hospital information system. A requirement of the ontology is to contain a representation for what is commonly referred to by the term `adverse event', one challenge being that distinct authoritative sources define this term in slightly different ways and utterly context-dependent. The presence of some common ground in all definitions is, however, obvious. Using the analytical principles underlying Basic Formal Ontology and Referent Tracking, both developed in the tradition of philosophical realism, we propose a formal representation of this common ground which involves the combination of a reference ontology consisting exclusively of universals and an applicat...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: FOIS
• Authors: Werner Ceusters, Maria Capolupo, Georges De Moor, Jos Devlies
• Keywords: Adverse Events, Basic Formal Ontology, FOIS 2008, Information Technology, Ontology