Foundations of Biomedical Knowledge Representation

Medicine§and healthcare are currently faced with a significant rise in their complexity.§This is partly due to the progress made during the past three decades in the§fundamental biological understanding of the causes of health and disease at the§molecular, (sub)cellular, and organ level. Since the end of the 1970s, when knowledge§representation and reasoning in the biomedical field became a separate area of§research, huge progress has been made in the development of methods and tools§that are finally able to create impact in the way medicine is being practised.§§Even§though there are huge differences in the techniques and methods used by§biomedical researchers, there is now an increasing tendency to share research§results in terms of formal knowledge representation methods, such as ontologies,§statistical models, network models, and mathematical models. As there is an§urgent need for health-care professionals to make better decisions, computer-based§support based on such knowledge is now becoming increasingly important. It may§also be the only way to integrate research results from the different parts of§the spectrum of biomedical and clinical research.§§The§aim of this book is to shed light on developments in knowledge representation§at different levels of biomedical§application, ranging from human biology to clinical guidelines, and using different§techniques, from probability theory and differential equations to logic. The book§starts with two introductory chapters followed by 18 papers organized in the§following topical sections: diagnosis of disease; monitoring of health and§disease and conformance; assessment of health and personalization; prediction§and prognosis of health and disease; treatment of disease; and recommendation.§