Exploiting Semantic Web Technologies to Develop OWL-Based Clinical Practice Guideline Execution Engines

Computerizing paper-based CPG and then executing them can provide evidence-informed decision support to physicians at the point of care. Semantic web technologies especially Web Ontology Language (OWL) ontologies have been profusely used to represent computerized CPG. Using semantic web reasoning capabilities to execute OWL based computerized CPG unties them from a specific custom-built CPG execution engine and increases their shareability as any OWL reasoner and triple store can be utilized for CPG execution. However, existing semantic web reasoning based CPG execution engines suffer from lack of ability to execute CPG with high levels of expressivity, high cognitive load of computerization of paper-based CPG and updating their computerized versions. In order to address these limitations, we have developed three CPG execution engines based on OWL 1 DL, OWL 2 DL and OWL 2 DL + Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). OWL 1 DL serves as the base execution engine capable of executing a wide range of CPG constructs, however for executing highly complex CPG the OWL 2 DL and OWL 2 DL + SWRL offer additional executional capabilities. We evaluated the technical performance and medical correctness of our execution engines using a range of CPG. Technical evaluations show the efficiency of our CPG execution engines in terms of CPU time and validity of the generated recommendation in comparison to existing CPG execution engines. Medical evaluations by domain experts show the validity of the CPG-mediated therapy plans in terms of relevance, safety, and ordering for a wide range of patient scenarios.