Conceptual models of drug-drug interactions: A summary of recent efforts

Conceptual modeling elicits and describes general knowledge in a particular domain and is a fundamental step in the development of knowledge-based systems. However, different conceptual models (CMs) could represent the same domain because they result from human intellectual activity with different objectives. Analyzing previous related efforts is crucial when conceptualizing a domain to avoid duplication, increase interoperability and ensure scientific conformity. Our domain of interest is drug-drug interactions (DDIs), and here we review 15 studies that have attempted total or partial representation of the DDI domain. Direct comparison of these different conceptualizations is complex because CMs are usually not provided, differ considerably from each other or are described with diverse formalisms at different abstraction levels. Therefore, to compare these CMs, we represent all of them in a common representation framework. Here, we compare the scope, content, final implementation and applications of CMs of the DDI domain. We aim to identify which aspects of DDIs have been conceptualized, characterize how this information has been modeled by different research groups, describe how each CM has been translated and illustrate the applications generated from the final models.