[VM] RE: World Health Organisation International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) Ontology?

Alan

> Also before working on a public version, one needs to sort the copyright issues
> with WHO who have not in the past encouraged such ventures, but whose attitudes
> are changing.

I'm not sure if I have not already pushed this here, but maybe it would be good to
consider to add in the VM Note a paragraph explaining which interest major international
organisations like WHO would have in making their vocabularies publicly available for SW
applications, including copyright issues.

I've been working for a while in a project involving the WTO (World Tourism Organisation)
Thesaurus on Tourism and Leisure Activities [1], with the same kind of copyright issues.
OTOH examples of international organisations pushing their vocabularies in the public
domain and for SW could be show-cased. One thinks of GEMET [2], for example.

Bottom line is that best practices have not only technical aspects, but social or
"political" ones, about which it's difficult to keep completely agnostic (IMO).

[1] http://www.world-tourism.org/cgi-bin/infoshop.storefront/EN/product/1218-1
[2] http://www.eionet.eu.int/GEMET

**********************************************************************************

Bernard Vatant
Senior Consultant
Knowledge Engineering
bernard.vatant@mondeca.com

"Making Sense of Content" :  http://www.mondeca.com
"Everything is a Subject" :  http://universimmedia.blogspot.com

**********************************************************************************

> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org]De la part de Alan Rector
> Envoyé : mercredi 8 décembre 2004 11:46
> À : Phil Tetlow
> Cc : SWBPD list; jeremy rogers; Pieter Zanstra@Kermanog
> Objet : Re: World Health Organisation International Classification of
> Diseases (ICD-10) Ontology?
>
>
>
> Phil
>
> I think I can say definitively that there is not an RDF/OWL version publicly
> available.
>
> Also before working on a public version, one needs to sort the copyright issues
> with WHO who have not in the past encouraged such ventures, but whose attitudes
> are changing.
>
> There are also a host of issues around representing the idiosyncrasies of ICD in
> any formal way - its dagger/asterisk notation, exclusions, inclusions, residual
> categories ('not otherwise specified', 'not elsewhere classified', etc.).  On
> top of that there is a whole second volume of rules concerning details of how
> things are to be classified when several conditions are present, and a long
> 'index' which in effect provides an extension to the meaning of the
> classifications.
>
> We have always mapped to the required subset rather than attempting to represent
> it directly in a a logic based formalism.  There should be material on the
> openGalen website on this.  If it is not obvious, Jeremy Rogers and/or Pieter
> Zanstra (see cc above) can point you to the relevant papers and resources.
>
>
> Regards
>
> Alan
>
>
>
> Phil Tetlow wrote:
>
> > I am currently working with a UK Government Department who have a need to
> > utilise The World Health Organisation’s disease classification systems
> > ICD10, ICD11 and ICDF. Google shows a lot of codification work on this, but
> > does anyone happen to know if there is an RDF/OWL representation available?
> > If not, would anyone in the WG be interested in looking at this?
> >
> > Kind Regards
> >
> > Phil Tetlow
> > Senior Consultant
> > IBM Business Consulting Services
> > Mobile. (+44) 7740 923328
>
> --
> Alan L Rector
> Professor of Medical Informatics
> Department of Computer Science
> University of Manchester
> Manchester M13 9PL, UK
> TEL: +44-161-275-6188/6149/7183
> FAX: +44-161-275-6236/6204
> Room: 2.88a, Kilburn Building
> email: rector@cs.man.ac.uk
> web: www.cs.man.ac.uk/mig
>         www.opengalen.org
>         www.clinical-escience.org
>         www.co-ode.org
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 8 December 2004 11:33:51 UTC