Tools and Core Vocabulary

Hi, Robert 

Two points I would like to make here:

Point 1: tools, I could not agree with you more. 

I am a new "farmer" ploughing the fields - developing ontologies in 
Healthcare, for semantic webized clinical pathways [1] or radiation 
protection guidelines [2].  Ontologies will be produced at an increasingly 
speed and volume, much the same way data being generated today. Although 
you can preach to physicians "best practice" in developing ontologies, I 
have no doubt that we will have to interact with ontologies as diversify 
as the data we are facing today. As a ontology developer, I am eagerly 
looking for tools to make my life easier.

In the Healthcare industry, physicians will ultimately be responsible for 
generating medical knowledge content.  Unlike bioinformatics researchers, 
the majority of the physicians in the hospital will have little time and 
patience to generate a "well-designed" ontology.  They need tools that can 
easily provide access and editing ability for them so they can semantic 
webized the knowledge they have (for example guidelines and pathways), 
while do not have to be a certified ontology developer, much the same way 
information are input in web nowadays. 

As for the integration of ontologies, I am expecting a similar battle as 
we are facing today in the database world. Appropriate tools are very 
important for the successful adoption of SW in Healthcare, I believe.  As 
application developers, we now benefit greatly from application 
development platforms that provide powerful tools and data access objects 
that shield us from handling data directly.  My hope is that there will be 
just as many tools at our disposal for semantic web application 
development in the future. 

Point 2: Core vocabulary and more community-consensus-based ontology 
development.  This core vocabulary should be the intersection of 
ontologies in HC-LS work. I hope via the work of this working group, we 
will have a wider adoption of core vocabulary and make the connection of 
ontologies easier. As a interest/working group, I would like to see some 
discussion and actions on the development of the "core vocabulary" which 
is outlined in the group's charter [3].   I am very much looking forward 
to start the work with the rest of the group. 

Kind regards.


Helen Chen, Agfa Healthcare
http://www.agfa.com/w3c/hchen


[1] Adaptable Clinical Pathway Ontology - XG group proposal 
[2] RPGOntology - A Semantic Webized Knowledge Base for Radiation 
Protection Guideline
[3] HCLSIG Charter






Robert Stevens <robert.stevens@manchester.ac.uk> 
Sent by: public-semweb-lifesci-request@w3.org
10/12/2005 11:22 AM

To
<wangxiao@musc.edu>, <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
cc

Subject
RE: Antwort: RE: Semantic web article in Nature Biotechnology








"> >>carefully; I think it is imperative for the computer
 > scientists among
 > >>us to also teach them the importance of designing their software
 > >>carefully."

This is not preaching; it is doing -- my main original point. I do, 
however, return to the point that many of us in CS only get as far as 
saying "it should be done properly" and little else. There are, of course, 

many exceptions.

My point of substance was about modularisation. I hope that someone will 
show me how to do it in OWL, after telling me what the behaviour of a 
module is.

Tools; tools; tools.

robert.


At 14:08 12/10/2005, wangxiao wrote:

> > Agree furiously...
>
>+ 1.
>
>Solution always lies in the middle.  But the problem is how we make both
>sides must be willing to meet.
>
>
> > Craig Webster wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > >>Dear Robert,  We certainly do need to enable, but I do see
> > preaching
> > >>as critical as well.  I see it happen far too often in our
> > field that
> > >>people jump into large projects and "just do it" without
> > proper design
> > >>and deliberation up front.  They end up wasting huge amounts of
> > >>effort, and creating artifacts that waste the time of
> > others as well.
> > >>
> > >>Biologists learn the importance of designing their experiments
> > >>carefully; I think it is imperative for the computer
> > scientists among
> > >>us to also teach them the importance of designing their software
> > >>carefully.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > While the "just do it" attitude does have problems, there is also a
> > > problem with the "plan it all" attitude. The first gives
> > you a working
> > > but hard to extend artefact. The second give you a
> > beautiful, easy to
> > > extend and maintain artefact which can be hard to work with.
> > >
> > > The model should accurately portray the domain and the best
> > way (in my
> > > opinion) to do this is to walk the middle ground: plan, design,
> > > implement a model which loosely matches the domain and try
> > to use it.
> > > After using teh model and seeing what is lacking you can
> > then extend
> > > the model to match how it will be used.
> > >
> > > Yours,
> > > Craig
> >
> >
> >
> >