Summary
Objectives To provide typical examples of biomedical ontologies in action, emphasizing the role
played by biomedical ontologies in knowledge management, data integration and decision
support.
MethodsBiomedical ontologies selected for their practical impact are examined from a functional
perspective. Examples of applications are taken from operational systems and the biomedical
literature, with a bias towards recent journal articles.
Results The ontologies under investigation in this survey include SNOMED CT, the Logical
Observation Identifiers, Names, and Codes (LOINC), the Foundational Model of Anatomy,
the Gene Ontology, RxNorm, the National Cancer Institute Thesaurus, the International
Classification of Diseases, the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and the Unified Medical
Language System (UMLS). The roles played by biomedical ontologies are classified into
three major categories: knowledge management (indexing and retrieval of data and information,
access to information, mapping among ontologies); data integration, exchange and semantic
interoperability; and decision support and reasoning (data selection and aggregation,
decision support, natural language processing applications, knowledge discovery).
Conclusions Ontologies play an important role in biomedical research through a variety of applications.
While ontologies are used primarily as a source of vocabulary for standardization
and integration purposes, many applications also use them as a source of computable
knowledge. Barriers to the use of ontologies in biomedical applications are discussed.
Geissbuhler A, Kulikowski C, editors. IMIA Year book of Medical Informatics 2008.
Keywords
Biomedical ontologies - knowledge management - data integration - decision support