Foundations of Biomedical Knowledge Representation

Medicineand health care are currently faced with a significant rise in theircomplexity. This is partly due to the progress made during the past threedecades in the fundamental biological understanding of the causes of health anddisease at the molecular, (sub)cellular, and organ level. Since the end of the1970s, when knowledge representation and reasoning in the biomedical fieldbecame a separate area of research, huge progress has been made in thedevelopment of methods and tools that are finally able to impact on the waymedicine is being practiced.

Eventhough there are huge differences in the techniques and methods used bybiomedical researchers, there is now an increasing tendency to share researchresults in terms of formal knowledge representation methods, such asontologies, statistical models, network models, and mathematical models. Asthere is an urgent need for health-care professionals to make better decisions,computer-based support using this knowledge is now becoming increasingly important.It may also be the only way to integrate research results from the differentparts of the spectrum of biomedical and clinical research.

Theaim of this book is to shed light on developments in knowledge representationat different levels of biomedical application, ranging from human biology toclinical guidelines, and using different techniques, from probability theoryand differential equations to logic. The book starts with two introductorychapters followed by 18 contributions organized in the following topicalsections: diagnosis of disease; monitoring of health and disease andconformance; assessment of health and personalization; prediction and prognosisof health and disease; treatment of disease; and recommendations.