Medical Subject Headings Controlled Vocabulary (MeSH) |
Controlled vocabulary |
Comprehensive coverage |
Terms appear in hierarchies on the basis of relatedness for document retrieval and are not is-a relationships. Terms are not linked by relations |
Terms used in an infectious diseases ontology can be mapped to MeSH |
International Classification of Diseases – 10 (ICD-10) |
Clinical terminology |
Reasonable coverage but lacks depth |
Disease classification is based on anatomy and pathological structures, however the infectious disease domain does not follow anatomical partitions. Therefore, the hierarchy is not logical for clinical infectious diseases |
Terms used in an infectious diseases ontology can be mapped to ICD-10 |
Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine – Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) |
Clinical terminology |
Comprehensive coverage of clinical terms |
Multiple modes of classification limits the capability of automated reasoning The result is the assertion of type-supertype relations that do not hold. There are no natural language definitions. |
Terms used in an infectious diseases ontology were mapped to SNOMED-CT |
Disease Ontology (DO) |
Ontology |
Limited coverage |
Disorganized hierarchy for infectious diseases. Mixes types of infection with types of disease, as well as mixing types based on anatomical location, type of infectious agent or clinical syndrome and properties of infectious agents |
Terms used in an infectious diseases ontology can be mapped to DO |
Antibiotic prescribing ontology |
Ontology |
Limited to common infections seen in hospital |
Suitable, however, the ontology is not publically available. Narrow range of clinical infectious disease syndromes. |
Provides proof of principle that an ontology can provide the knowledge base for decision support |
Infectious Diseases Ontology (IDO) |
Ontology |
Many of the modules are still in development |
Suitable. Before BCIDO, there was no IDO module corresponding to the clinical ID domain. |
The core IDO was used as the upper ontology. |