Identity Tracking of a Disease as a Causal Chain

This paper discusses the ontological treatment of identity of a disease based on an ontological model of diseases as causal chains. An individual causal chain changes through its processes such as extending, branching, fading, etc. When we suppose that an individual disease is constituted by such a causal chain, changes of the causal chain imply changes of the disease. Then, how should we deal with identity of a disease? To answer this, we consider identity of a disease as a causal chain based on some ontological theories. As a result, we propose an ontological model for identity tracking of a disease as a causal chain. This work should contribute to the ontological treatment of identity of diseases in medical information systems.