Semantic foundations of medical information systems based on top-level ontologies

The modeling of knowledge and its implementation 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 sound knowledge modeling—in particular in medicine—requires expertise from areas such as linguistics, informatics, medicine, cognitive science and philosophy. In the present paper, we discuss relevant aspects of such an approach and outline some results of the work of the research group Onto-Med. In particular, we expound a methodology, which supports the semantic foundation of medical information systems by using top-level ontologies.