Towards A “Deep” Ontology for African Traditional Medicine

Armel Ayimdji, Souleymane Koussoubé, Laure P. Fotso, Balira O. Konfé

.

DOI: 10.4236/iim.2011.36030                

Abstract

The increasing interest on ontologies as the backbone technology for knowledge based systems implies the refinement of ontologies development methods. In this paper we propose a new approach to develop an ontology for African Traditional Medicine. The aim of our approach is to build a deep ontology by deepening concepts descriptions to formally represent all the semantics underlying the concepts used in African traditional medicine. We use a description logics language to formalize our approach.

Keywords

Primary Ontology, Deep Ontology, Hidden Aspects, Interpretations, African Traditional Medicine, Description Logics

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	M. Uschold, M. Gruninger, “Ontologies: principles, methods and applications,” Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol. 11, Issue 2, 1996, pp. 93-155. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1017/S0269888900007797
[2]	Ghislain Atemezing., Juan Pavón, “An Ontology for African Traditional Medicine,” International Symposium on Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence 2008 (DCAI′08): Series: Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing , Vol. 50 P. 329-337. Salamanca, Spain (October 2008).
[3]	Ghislain Atemezing, “African Traditional Medicine ontology,” 2008. http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/40223
[4]	S. Aboughe Angone, H. Mathouet, A. Souza, L. Engone, F. Bivigou, C. Eyelé Mvé Mba, M. Lamidi, “Quelques plantes utilisées en médecine traditionnelle pour le traitement de la stérilité chez les femmes au Gabon,” Ethnopharmacologia, No 43, Juillet 2009, pp. 52 – 58.
[5]	Laure Pauline Fotso, “Table of Entities and Attributes of Data Bases in MEDITRA (Knowledge based on African Traditional Herbal Medicine),” in Rapport de Recherche N 20, Université de Yaoundé I, 1999.
[6]	M. Lamidi, E. Ollivier, C. Eyelé Mvé Mba, L. Nze Ekekang, G. Balansard, “Enquêtes auprès des tradipra- ticiens dans 3 régions du Gabon sur des plantes utilisées dans le traitement des diarrhées et des helminthiases,” Ethnopharmacologia, No 32, Novembre 2003, pp 39-51.
[7]	Human Disease Ontology: http://www.obofoundry.org/ cgibin/detail.cgi?id=disease_ontology
[8]	Infectious disease Ontology: http://www.obofoundry.Org/ cgibin/detail.cgi?id=infectious_disease_ontology
[9]	M. Uschold, “Building ontologies, Towards a Unified Methodology,” in 16th Annual Conference of the British Computer Society Specialist Group on Expert Systems, 1996.
[10]	F. Baader et al., The description logic handbook: Theory, Implementation and Applications, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2003. ISBN 0-521-78176-0
[11]	S. R Abidi, S. S Abidi, S. Hussain, M. Shepherd, “Ontology-based Modeling of Clinical Practice Guidelines: A Clinical Decision Support System for Breast Cancer Follow-up Interventions at Primary Care Settings,” Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 129:845–849, 2007. PMid:17911835