Ontological foundations of medical information systems

The modeling of knowledge and implementing it in software systems is not sufficiently supported by proper guidelines and well-established principles. An interdisciplinary approach seems to be necessary because the development of guidelines for ontologically sound knowledge modeling - in particular in medicine - requires knowledge and expertise from areas such as linguistics, informatics, medicine, cognitive science and philosophy. Moreover, the ever increasing amount of knowledge in the various fields of medicine and the increasing need for differing forms of presentation in very different electronic media including the Internet require a harmonization of systems of concepts which transcends national borders. These challenges should be tackled by a research program which, in equal measure, takes account of the theoretical foundations, the medical application areas and the use of software in medicine. In the present paper we discuss important aspects of such an approach and outline some results of the work of the Onto-Med research group. In particular, we expound a methodology which supports the ontological foundation of medical information systems. This method is based on ontological mappings using reference top-level ontologies, and is inspired by rigorous logico-philosophical principles.