ONTOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN ORTHOPEDIC SURGERY

Efficiency and effectiveness of orthopedic surgery can be achieved by enabling proper decision-making in a shortest period of time, based on complete and updated information on the status, type of fracture and fixators used for a particular fracture. In this way, the risk of possible complications caused by a late intervention can be reduced. In such circumstances, there exist critical needs for an effective and efficient knowledge management approach where different domain models are combined and formally interrelated, so that the decisions are based on the consistent and complete information. In this paper, ontologies are used to propose a framework for implementing such an approach in the domain of orthopedic surgery. The framework combines formal models of the generic products and supply chains for their manufacturing and delivery, anatomical elements, e.g. bones, types of their fractures and fixators – the medical products which are used in the fracture treatments. Then the possible uses of this framework for the purpose of knowledge management in orthopedic surgery are discussed in the context of the assumptions of development of Next Generation Enterprise Information Systems.