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Methods Inf Med 2019; 58(06): 194-204
DOI: 10.1055/s-0040-1702236
Review Article
Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York

Development and Evaluation of Ontologies in Traditional Medicine: A Review Study

Hassan Shojaee-Mend
1   Department of Health Information Management, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
,
Haleh Ayatollahi
1   Department of Health Information Management, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
2   Health Management and Economics Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
,
Azam Abdolahadi
3   Department of Complementary Medicine, Research Institute for Islamic and Complementary Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
› Author Affiliations Funding This work was supported by Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran (IUMS/SHMIS_97–3-37–12671).
Further Information

Publication History

01 August 2019

09 January 2020

Publication Date:
29 April 2020 (online)

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Abstract

Background Development of ontologies in traditional medicine can be a foundation for other applications of informatics in this field. Despite the importance of the development of ontologies in traditional medicine, there are few review studies in this area. This study aims to review different methods for ontology development and evaluation in traditional medicine.

Methods This review study was performed in 2019. To find related papers, six databases including Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, IEEE Xplore, and SpringerLink were searched. Initially, 761 articles were identified. After applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 22 articles were selected to review different methods for ontology development and evaluation in traditional medicine.

Results Five different methods were used for ontology development in traditional medicine, namely conventional, customized, semiautomatic, upper-level, and large-scale methods. The results showed that ontology evaluation was only considered in 32% of the studies. The common methods used for ontology evaluation were competency questions, expert-based evaluation, and automatic detection of inconsistency errors.

Conclusion Development of ontologies is of high importance for organizing knowledge in traditional medicine, as this branch of medicine is often not documented or is documented in local languages. The results of this study can help ontology developers to be familiar with the common methods of ontology development and evaluation in traditional medicine and use them for future research.

Keywords

traditional medicine - ontology development - ontology evaluation

Supplementary Material

 

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