Constructing clinical pathway ontology to incorporate patient state, intervention and time

Clinical Pathway has become a beneficial and well-accepted healthcare management tool in medical setting. During the execution of clinical pathway by multidisciplinary staff, a patient receives a set of medical interventions in an order of day by day until discharge. The determination of patient conditions is a key prerequisite to diagnostic decision making and treatment selection. Major patient states as well as underlying temporal information are preliminarily identified through consulting expert physician and referring to clinical pathway. A representational structure is designed and then realized by constructing a clinical pathway ontology. Two hierarchical bases that contain terms and knowledge are built and the ontology shows its ability to represent patient state, medical intervention and temporal information in clinical pathway. Further research needs be done based on our proposed clinical pathway ontology.