An Ontology-Based Approach to Constructing Medical Computational Problems for Use in Electronic Medical Education

Recently, a great interest has emerged in e-learning approaches for medical education. In particular, problem/case based learning constitutes a significant initiative in the domain. In this paper, we propose an ontology-based approach to constructing medical computational problems (MCPs) to be used in electronic medical education. Specifically, we elaborate on a novel ontological schema for MCP description that semantically annotates problems and their associated solutions (in terms of algorithms and implementations), linked with the IEEE metadata standard for learning objects (LOM) and its healthcare extension (Healthcare LOM). We present the overall procedure involved in the construction of the educational framework on MCPs, the involved actors, and the semantic schema of the corresponding knowledge model developed. The applicability and virtue of the proposed approach is illustrated via an example test case lesson on pulmonary embolism.