OntoDiabetic: An Ontology-Based Clinical Decision Support System for Diabetic Patients

Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) assist medical practitioners in their daily work, thereby enhancing the quality of care given to a patient. It supports them in the decision-making process and suggests appropriate treatments. The use of the ontology to build knowledge-driven decision support systems is widely adopted. Ontology is best suited to encapsulate the concepts and relationships of terms associated with the medical domain. It is suitable for capturing medical knowledge in a formal way, allowing sharing and reusing it whenever necessary. All concepts and relationships detailed in clinical guidelines can be implemented using Web Ontology Language (OWL). The reasoning mechanism is vital in any knowledge-based system. Ontology can be reasoned to recommend the suitable treatment for a patient by considering the current medical status of the patient. OntoDiabetic, an ontology-based decision support system is developed to assess the risk factors and provide appropriate treatment suggestions for diabetic patients. This paper focuses on the modeling and implementation of clinical guidelines using OWL2 rules and the reasoning process of the OntoDiabetic system. The case study is conducted for patients having the risk of overt cardiovascular disease, diabetic nephropathy and hypertension in primary health centers of Oman.