This article is part of the supplement: Selected contributions to the First European Conference on SNOMED CT .

Proceedings

Ontological analysis of SNOMED CT

Gergely Héja¹ , György Surján¹ and Péter Varga²

¹  National Institute for Strategic Health Research, Arany János utca 6-8, 1051 Budapest, Hungary

²  Eötvös Loránd University, Egyetem tér 1-3, 1053 Budapest, Hungary

author email corresponding author email

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8(Suppl 1):S8doi:10.1186/1472-6947-8-S1-S8

Published:	27 October 2008

Abstract

Background

SNOMED CT is the most comprehensive medical terminology. However, its use for intelligent services based on formal reasoning is questionable.

Methods

The analysis of the structure of SNOMED CT is based on the formal top-level ontology DOLCE.

Results

The analysis revealed several ontological and knowledge-engineering errors, the most important are errors in the hierarchy (mostly from an ontological point of view, but also regarding medical aspects) and the mixing of subsumption relations with other types (mostly 'part of').

Conclusion

The found errors impede formal reasoning. The paper presents a possible way to correct these problems.