Summary
Objective:
To review the literature concerning the quality assurance of medical ontologies.
Methods:
scholar.google.com was searched using the search strings (+ontology +”quality assurance”)
and (+ontology +”evaluation/evaluating”). Relevant publications were selected by manual
review. Other work already familiar to the author, or suggested by other researchers
contacted by the author, were included. The papers were analysed for common themes.
Results:
Four broad properties of an ontology were identified that may be quality-assured:
philosophical validity, compliance with meta-ontological commitments, ‘content correctness’,
and fitness for purpose. Each published methodology addressed only a subset of these
properties. ‘Content’ may be divided into domain knowledge content, and metadata describing
either the provenance of domain knowledge content, or relationships between it and
lexical information (e.g. for display and retrieval). ‘Correctness’ (whether of domain
knowledge content or metadata) may also be further subdivided into truth, completeness,
parsimony and internal consistency.
Conclusions:
Understanding of how to assure the quality of ontologies, or evaluate their fitness
for specific purposes, is improving but remains poor. A combination of methodologies
is required, but tools to support a comprehensive quality assurance programme remain
lacking.
Perfect quality of an ontology is not provable and may not be desirable: an ontology
compliant with all current philosophical theories, following necessary ontological
commitments, and with entirely ‘correct’ content, may be too complex to be directly
usable or useful.
The extent to which an ontology’s fitness for purpose is predicted or influenced by
its other properties remains to be determined. Field studies of ontologies in use,
including interrater effects, are required.
Keywords
Terminology - quality control - information systems
