Referent tracking for treatment optimisation in schizophrenic patients: A case study in applying philosophical ontology to diagnostic algorithms

The IPAP Schizophrenia Algorithm was originally designed in the form of a flow-chart to help physicians optimise the treatment of schizophrenic patients in the spirit of guideline-based medicine. We take this algorithm as our starting point in investigating how artifacts of this sort can benefit from the facilities of high-quality ontologies. The IPAP algorithm exists thus far only in a form suitable for use by human beings. We draw on the resources of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) in order to show how such an algorithm can be enhanced in such a way that it can be used in Semantic Web and related applications. We found that BFO provides a framework that is able to capture in a rigorous way all the types of entities represented in the IPAP Schizophrenia Algorithm in way which yields a computational tool that can be used by software agents to perform monitoring and control of schizophrenic patients. We discuss the issues involved in building an application ontology for this purpose, issues which are important for any Semantic Web application in the life science and healthcare domains.