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RE: [health-ont] Gentle Reminder of today's NHIN-RFI Conference Call

To: "'[health-ont] '" <health-ont@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Bob Smith" <Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2005 09:37:04 -0800
Message-id: <200501051738.j05HcM6W014331@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Nicolas,    (01)

Good points about scope and context, and the challenges of emergent
situations ( bone loss in space, in your example).    (02)

Parts of these issues to discuss can be mapped into one or more of Dr.
Brailer's 24 questions, which brings up another important agenda item: The
Outline of our response.     (03)

We now have a great Thesis Statement that defines the NHIN problem as
essentially an Ontology Policy Problem and Ontology Solution.    (04)

Reading the RFI text provides further guidance: I see two distinct parts to
this RFI- 1st, A Preamble that defines their intention to make a set of NHIN
Decision Scenario (i.e. an Ontology Life-Cycle), and 2nd the Body of 24
questions organized into 3-5 functional Sections (Technical,
Organizational-Managerial-Architectural, Standards-Legal).    (05)

Our Health-Ontolog group self-organized into three task groups to draft
preliminary Ontology Policy oriented answers to specific sections, with the
first team (Mark, Adam, Samson) closely bound to the Thesis Statement (
Questions 1-3), and the  second team (Kurt, Bo, and Bob) concentrating on
Organizational and Management Questions 4-18, and by extensions, 19-20).    (06)

It might be very useful to ask "What other elements need to be added?" such
as an outline section called "FAQ about a NHIN Ontology". (Kurt and I have
already found a document with excellent questions, but needing new or
modified answers....)    (07)

What suggestions do each of you have for a working Ontolog RFI Outline?    (08)

Thanks,    (09)

Bob    (010)


-----Original Message-----
From: health-ont-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:health-ont-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nicolas F
Rouquette
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 8:46 AM
To: [health-ont]
Subject: Re: [health-ont] Gentle Reminder of today's NHIN-RFI Conference
Call    (011)

On the characteristics section, I would suggest adding something about:    (012)

- an infrastructure system (Mark was somewhat ambiguous about what 
"system" means and this is my guess) that permits the following 
open-source based processes:
 - content editing and retrieval
 - peer-review approval
 - formal analysis via constraint solvers and theorem proovers    (013)

On the solution proposed, I would suggest adding something about:    (014)

- tool-specific tutorials for accelerating the adoption and facilitating 
the learning curve process of various
  users not necessarily familiar with the underlying technology (i.e.,  
formal ontology, formal logic, categorization, etc...)    (015)

[this is important to establish value for the user community, i.e., 
patients, doctors, medical/academic researchers]    (016)

- value-added statements and justifications about the specific relevance 
and merit of the proposed technology to solve NHII's specific challenges    (017)

[this is important to establish value for the sponsors paying for this 
infrastructure]    (018)

There is one important issue that should be explicitly mentioned and I'm 
not sure how to state it correctly.    (019)

Each concept in the ontology (e.g., person) needs a semantic definition 
context to explain what
that concept means in a parsimonous and comprehensible way to users and 
formal analysis tools
(this is the notion of Chomsky's comprehensible input that, if not 
guaranteed, jeopardizes communication and understanding).    (020)

One big problem here is the scope of that semantic context required to 
define the meaning of a concept.
Part of this problem is something that ontoclean addresses with 
meta-property tags but part of this problem
also aludes to the boundary that we use in defining that scope. For 
example, a lot of knowledge about medicine
stems from our experience on earth while a lot of medical issues in the 
near future will come from experiences
in space where the context is significantly different and often requires 
revisiting assumptions about relevance of
effects that either don't exist on earth or are of insignificant 
importance. Weightlessness is one often cited factor
that induces bone loss, something that is rare to experience on earth 
(unless you happen to have a personality that
seeks experiencing unusually frequent moments of weightlessness in 
various earthly activities such as bungee jumping,
roller coaster, acrobatic aircraft, etc...)    (021)

-- Nicolas.    (022)


Mark Musen wrote:    (023)

> On Dec 22, 2004, at 4:17 PM, Bob Smith wrote:
>
>> Excellent start on structuring content for our initial thesis (Problem
>> Statement)!
>>
>
> I agree!  I've made a few comments on the Wiki:  
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NhinRfiThesis
>     Mark
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/health-ont/
> Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/health-ont/NHIN-RFI/
> To  Post: mailto:health-ont@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NhinRfi
>    (024)

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To  Post: mailto:health-ont@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?NhinRfi    (025)



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Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/health-ont/NHIN-RFI/
To  Post: mailto:health-ont@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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