Semantic Technologies for Medical Knowledge Representation

Abstract

The ongoing rapid growth of diversity of data and their wide use to solve different complex tasks resulted in a significant number of semantic reference systems enriched with vocabularies, thesauri, terminologies, and ontologies. The extensive use of ontologies stemmed a new approach to build modern intelligent systems in reusing and sharing pieces of declarative knowledge. A lot of effort has been made to produce standard ontologies for medical knowledge representation. This chapter brings an overview of semantic knowledge representation frameworks such as RDF and OWL for developing ontology-based medical systems. The chapter presents the state of the art in ontology resources/systems so that it could be useful for learners and researchers involved in interdisciplinary research areas that include medicine and information technology. Also, a clinical use case is illustrated highlighting the role of ontology in the medical domain.