Specifying an ontology framework to model processes in hospitals

Abstract: In healthcare, organisational changes are suggested and implemented routinely as an answer to increasing patient demands and financial restrictions. Computer simulations offer a way to test these new procedures as well as increase the knowledge about complex systems. However, there are several challenges such as time and the difficulty to integrate simulations. To cope with these problems, ontologies is proposed as a foundation for simulations. Ontologies enable transfer of semantic meaning and a standardised way to describe objects to simplify integration of simulations. As a first step in this direction, this study aims to create an ontology framework by identifying archetypical concepts in hospital processes. The developed ontology framework is based on a generic process ontology. Moreover, case studies and interviews were used to identify, define and implement concepts in the software Protégé 5.1 using OWL-DL standard. Validation was performed by mapping hospital processes defined in three case studies using the ontology framework. The resulting ontology framework consists of 146 classes, 180 instances, 34 relations and 61 attributes. The validation of the ontology framework suggested that the framework was able torelate to all terms in the hospital processes presented in the case studies. Moreover, 50% of the terms were identical or synonyms to the concepts defined in the ontology framework. This is an indication that the ontology framework serves its function to model general concepts in hospital processes. In the future, the ontology framework will be used to create computer simulations of hospital processes. The ability to transfer semantic information and thus create computer simulations which are easy to integrate, will also be tested. Moreover, the ontology framework will be expanded by analysis of more hospital processes.