Ontology Engineering for Gastric Dystemperament in Persian Medicine.

OBJECTIVE: Developing an ontology can help collecting and sharing information in traditional medicine including Persian medicine in a well-defined format. The present study aimed to develop an ontology for gastric dystemperament in the Persian medicine. METHODS: This was a mixed-methods study conducted in 2019. The first stage was related to providing an ontology requirements specification document. In the second stage, important terms, concepts, and their relationships were identified via literature review and expert panels. Then, the results derived from the second stage were refined and validated using the Delphi method in three rounds. Finally, in the fourth stage, the ontology was evaluated in terms of consistency and coherence. RESULTS: In this study, 241 concepts related to different types of gastric dystemperament, diagnostic criteria, and treatments in the Persian medicine were identified through literature review and expert panels, and 12 new concepts were suggested during the Delphi study. In total, after performing three rounds of the Delphi study, 233 concepts were identified. Finally, an ontology was developed with 71 classes, and the results of the evaluation study revealed that the ontology was consistent and coherent. CONCLUSION: In this study, an ontology was created for gastric dystemperament in the Persian medicine. This ontology can be used for designing future systems, such as case-based reasoning and expert systems. Moreover, the use of other evaluation methods is suggested to construct a more complete and precise ontology.

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

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.