Ontology-based specification and generation of search queries for post-market surveillance

• Published in: Journal of biomedical semantics Vol. 10; no. 1; pp. 9 - 13
• Main Authors: Uciteli, Alexandr, Kropf, Stefan, Weiland, Timo, Meese, Stefanie, Graef, Klaus, Rohrer, Sabrina, Schurr, Marc O., Bartussek, Wolfram, Goller, Christoph, Blohm, Philipp, Seidel, Robin, Bayer, Christian, Kernenbach, Manuel, Pfeiffer, Kathrin, Lauer, Wolfgang, Meyer, Jörg-Uwe, Witte, Michael, Herre, Heinrich
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BioMed Central Ltd 30.05.2019; BioMed Central; BMC
• Subjects: Biological Ontologies; Data Mining - methods; Domains; Equipment and Supplies - adverse effects; Information retrieval; Information storage and retrieval; Intelligence gathering; Markets; Medical devices; Medical electronics; Medical equipment; Ontology; Ontology generation; Post-market surveillance; Product Surveillance, Postmarketing; Queries; Safety; Search engines; Search queries; Searching; Service oriented architecture; Specifications; Spreadsheet software; Spreadsheet-based ontology specification; Surveillance; Search queries; Information retrieval; Spreadsheet-based ontology specification; Ontology; Post-market surveillance; Ontology generation
• ISSN: 2041-1480; 2041-1480
• DOI: 10.1186/s13326-019-0203-7

The vigilant observation of medical devices during post-market surveillance (PMS) for identifying safety-relevant incidents is a non-trivial task. A wide range of sources has to be monitored in order to integrate all accessible data about the safety and performance of a medical device. PMS needs to be supported by an efficient search strategy and the possibility to create complex search queries by domain experts. We use ontologies to support the specification of search queries and the preparation of the document corpus, which contains all relevant documents. In this paper, we present (1) the Search Ontology (SON) v2.0, (2) an Excel template for specifying search queries, and (3) the Search Ontology Generator (SONG), which generates complex queries out of the Excel template. Based on our approach, a service-oriented architecture was designed, which supports and assists domain experts during PMS. Comprehensive testing confirmed the correct execution of all SONG functions. The applicability of our method and of the developed tools was evaluated by domain experts. The test persons concordantly rated our solution after a short period of training as highly user-friendly, intuitive and well applicable for supporting PMS. The Search Ontology is a promising domain-independent approach to specify complex search queries. Our solution allows advanced searches for relevant documents in different domains using suitable domain ontologies.