Using ontology in query answering systems: Scenarios, requirements and challenges

Equipped with the ultimate query answering system, computers would finally be in a position to address all our information needs in a natural way. In this paper, we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is working towards the ultimate Question Answering (QA) System for healthcare workers. L&C’s company strategy in this area is to design in a step-by-step fashion the essential components of such a system, each component being designed to solve some one part of the total problem and at the same time reflect well-defined needs on the prat of our customers. We compare our strategy with the research roadmap proposed by the Question Answering Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), paying special attention to the role of ontology.

[1]  Pierre Zweigenbaum,et al.  Towards a Medical Question-Answering System: a Feasibility Study , 2003, MIE.

[2]  G De Moor,et al.  The Explanatory Role of Events in Causal and Temporal Reasoning in Medicine , 1993, Methods of Information in Medicine.

[3]  Ronald J. Brachman,et al.  ON THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL STATUS OF SEMANTIC NETWORKS , 1979 .

[4]  Werner Ceusters,et al.  Mistakes in medical ontologies: where do they come from and how can they be detected? , 2004, Studies in health technology and informatics.

[5]  L. Brooke.  The National Library of Medicine. , 1980, Hospital libraries.

[6]  Achille C. Varzi,et al.  Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries , 2000 .

[7]  Thomas Bittner,et al.  A Theory of Granular Partitions , 2003, Foundations of Geographic Information Science.

[8]  P. Maurette.  [To err is human: building a safer health system]. , 2002, Annales francaises d'anesthesie et de reanimation.

[9]  Domenico M. Pisanelli,et al.  Ontologies in Medicine , 2004 .

[10]  Werner Ceusters,et al.  Ontology-assisted database integration to support natural language processing and biomedical data-mining , 2004, J. Integr. Bioinform..

[11]  Mark H Ebell,et al.  What is the best way to gather clinical questions from physicians? , 2003, Journal of the Medical Library Association : JMLA.

[12]  Barry Smith,et al.  SNAP and SPAN: Prolegomenon to Geodynamic Ontology , 2003 .

[13]  Richard A. Harshman,et al.  Indexing by Latent Semantic Analysis , 1990, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci..

[14]  Nicholas V. Findler,et al.  Associative Networks- Representation and Use of Knowledge by Computers , 1980, CL.

[15]  James A. Hendler,et al.  Marker-Passing over Microfeatures: Towards a Hybrid Symbolic/Connectionist Model , 1989, Cogn. Sci..

[16]  A Hasman,et al.  Medical narratives in electronic medical records. , 1997, International journal of medical informatics.

[17]  G De Moor,et al.  The distinction between linguistic and conceptual semantics in medical terminology and its implication for NLP-based knowledge acquisition. , 1998, Methods of information in medicine.

[18]  P. Gorman,et al.  A taxonomy of generic clinical questions: classification study , 2000, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[19]  L. Kohn,et al.  To Err Is Human : Building a Safer Health System , 2007 .

[20]  Werner Ceusters,et al.  Ontology and medical terminology: Why description logics are not enough , 2003 .

[21]  Frank Montyne.  The importance of formal ontologies : A case study in occupational health , 2001 .

[22]  Werner Ceusters,et al.  Towards industrial strength philosophy: how analytical ontology can help medical informatics , 2003 .

[23]  M. Ebell,et al.  Obstacles to answering doctors' questions about patient care with evidence: qualitative study , 2002, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[24]  Barry Smith,et al.  Mereotopology: A Theory of Parts and Boundaries , 1996, Data Knowl. Eng..

[25]  John A. Bateman.  Ontology Construction and Natural Language , 1993 .

[26]  Barry Smith,et al.  Formal ontology for biomedical knowledge systems integration , 2004 .

[27]  Chris Buckley,et al.  OHSUMED: an interactive retrieval evaluation and new large test collection for research , 1994, SIGIR '94.

[28]  Thomas Bittner,et al.  Directly depicting granular ontologies , 2004 .