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The Universal Medical Language System and the Gene Ontology: Some Critical Reflections

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KI 2003: Advances in Artificial Intelligence (KI 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2821))

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Abstract

The Unified Medical Language System and the Gene Ontology are among the most widely used terminology resources in the biomedical domain. However, when we evaluate them in the light of simple principles for well-constructed ontologies we find a number of characteristic inadequacies. Employing the theory of granular partitions, a new approach to the understanding of ontologies and of the relationships ontologies bear to instances in reality, we provide an application of this theory in relation to an example drawn from the context of the pathophysiology of hypertension. This exercise is designed to demonstrate how, by taking ontological principles into account we can create more realistic biomedical ontologies which will also bring advantages in terms of efficiency and robustness of associated software applications.

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Kumar, A., Smith, B. (2003). The Universal Medical Language System and the Gene Ontology: Some Critical Reflections. In: Günter, A., Kruse, R., Neumann, B. (eds) KI 2003: Advances in Artificial Intelligence. KI 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2821. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39451-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39451-8_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20059-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39451-8

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