Towards the Merging of Multiple Clinical Protocols and Guidelines via Ontology-Driven Modeling

Decision support systems based on computerized Clinical Protocols (CP) and Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) fall short when dealing with patient co-morbidites, as this demands the concurrent merging Of Multiple CP/CPG. We present an ontology-based approach for the merging of CPG and CP at two levels-i.e. knowledge modeling level and knowledge execution level. We have developed specialized ontological modeling constructs to facilitate merging of CPG and CP. We demonstrate the merging of multiple location-specific CP and disease-specific CPG.