Inferring recommendation interactions in clinical guidelines1
Issue title: Selected papers from the combined EKAW 2014 and Semantic Web journal track
Subtitle: Case-studies on multimorbidity
Guest editors: Stefan Schlobach and Krzysztof Janowicz
Article type: Research Article
Authors: Zamborlini, Veruskaa; b; *; ** | Hoekstra, Rinkea; c | Da Silveira, Marcosb | Pruski, Cedricb | ten Teije, Annettea | van Harmelen, Franka
Affiliations: [a] Dept. of Computer Science, VU University Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] | [b] LIST Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Luxembourg. E-mails: [email protected], [email protected] | [c] Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected].
Note: [1] This is an extended version, by invitation, of a paper accepted at the 19th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (EKAW 2014), in which the TMR4I model was first introduced [40].
Note: [**] Funded by CNPq (Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) within the program Science without Borders.
Abstract: The formal representation of clinical knowledge is still an open research topic. Classical representation languages for clinical guidelines are used to produce diagnostic and treatment plans. However, they have important limitations, e.g. when looking for ways to re-use, combine, and reason over existing clinical knowledge. These limitations are especially problematic in the context of multimorbidity; patients that suffer from multiple diseases. To overcome these limitations, this paper proposes a model for clinical guidelines (TMR4I) that allows the re-use and combination of knowledge from multiple guidelines. Semantic Web technology is applied to implement the model, allowing us to automatically infer interactions between recommendations, such as recommending the same drug more than once. It relies on an existing Linked Data set, DrugBank, for identifying drug-drug interactions. We evaluate the model by applying it to two realistic case studies on multimorbidity that combine guidelines for two (Duodenal Ulcer and Transient Ischemic Attack) and three diseases (Osteoarthritis, Hypertension and Diabetes) and compare the results with existing methods.
Keywords: Clinical knowledge representation, reasoning, combining medical guidelines, multimorbidity, OWL, SPARQL, rules, SWRL
DOI: 10.3233/SW-150212
Journal: Semantic Web, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 421-446, 2016
Computer-based techniques to improve medical treatments for people with multiple diseases
What is it about?
An increasing number of patients suffer from multiple diseases at the same time. This makes their treatment much more complex, and the standard medical treatment guidelines no longer apply (they are typically written for patients with just a single disease). We present computer-based techniques for analysing medical guidelines to detect how multiple guidelines may interact in unexpected ways, and how such adverse effects can be recognised and avoided.
Why is it important?
With our ageing population, we have an increasing number of patients that suffer from multiple simultaneious diseases. It's very difficult for doctors to be aware of all the ways in which the treatments for multiple diseases may interact in adverse ways, and have unexpected negative consequences for the patient. Our techniques exploit large knowledge-bases that are available on the Web of Data (Linked Data) to automatically detect and avoid such adverse consequences of interactions between multiple simultaneous treatments.
Resources
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Slides
Linked Open Data for Medical Guidelines Interactions
slide deck by Veruska Zamborlini outlining the content of the paper: how Linked Open Data can be used to detect and avoid unexpected interactions between multiple medical treatments for patients with multiple diseases