Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med)
The Onto-Med Research Group mourns the death of its founder and director PD Dr. habil. Barbara Heller on 27.03.2005 after a long illness. Read the obituary (in german) on this website.
Research in ontology is increasingly gaining importance for knowledge modeling, the semantic foundation of knowledge representation and for the development of meta-models in the area of practical applications. For the foundation of that modern research field, it is relevant to elaborate common scientific principles and methods which are intrinsic to current tools, methodologies and applications. In this connection problems regarding the following topics are of particular interest: the conceptualization of knowledge, descriptive metaphysics, semantics of natural language, and applications in the field of medicine.
Our goals in the research group Onto-Med are:
- basic research in formal ontology
- formal tools for ontology building
- medical domain ontologies
- computer-based applications
These goals result in a tripartition of our research into the following areas:
Theories
The theoretical research is devoted to the development, the analysis and the axiomatization of general basic ontologies (top-level ontologies) and their integration into a unified system. Such a reference system of top-level ontologies is the foundation for a formal framework which supports the construction and the representation of generic and domain-specific ontologies.
Concepts
Research in the area of concepts is directed at
- the development of formal tools and methods supporting the construction and representation of ontologies,
- the building of a general framework for ontological and conceptual modeling,
- the construction of generic and domain-specific ontologies in the areas of medicine and the biomedical sciences.
Applications
We are developing diverse software tools for managing guideline-based treatment in the medical domain with the goal to ensure quality in health care. These software tools will be available over the internet for different groups of medical experts from the medical practitioner to experts in university hospitals.
You can find further information about our research group on our homepage.
Leader of the Project Group
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Deutsche Website