An Ontology of Mechanical Circulatory Assist Devices Aimed at the Realization of a Decision Support System

In the information system arena ontologies have gained a prominent role. They are universally recognized as a valid tool for building more effective interoperable information systems. Their aim is to represent reality, in order that many different persons can share the meaning of the terms they contain. In this paper we present the architecture of a Decision Support System whose aim is to suggest the best Mechanical Circulatory Assist Device for a given patient in a given clinical context. The system is under development and incorporates an ontology which represents the features that the different devices may have. Such an ontology is the background for a solid foundation of the system from the semantic point of view. We sketch out the ontology and its features, then we present the ontology based DSS architecture. In conclusion we claim that the general architecture of our system can be effectively employed in many different domains in which the aim is to build a system which suggests the optimal choices in a given context.