Analysis and design of an ontology for intensive care diagnoses

Information about the patient's health status and about medical problems in general, play an important role in stratifying a patient population for qu ality assurance of intensive care. A terminological system which supports b oth the description of health problems for daily care practice a nd the agg regation of diagnostic information for evaluative research, is desirable fo r description of the patient population. This study describes the engineeri ng of an ontology that facilitates a terminological system for intensive ca re diagnoses. We analyzed the criteria for such an ontology and evaluated e xisting terminological systems according to these criteria. The analysis sh ows that none of the existing terminological systems completely satisfies a ll our criteria. We describe choices regarding design, content and represen tation of a new ontology on which an adequate terminological system is base d. The proposed ontology is characterized by the explicit and formal repres entation of the domain model, the metaspecification of its concepts, the vo cabulary to define concepts and the nomenclature to support the composition of new concepts.