An ontological analysis of diagnostic assertions in electronic healthcare records

We present a comparative analysis of two sets of Referent Tracking Tuples (RTT), which each author of this paper crafted independently from the other and which are about the same portion of reality that one could assume to be described faithfully through registered diagnoses in the problem list of an electronic healthcare record system. The analysis thereby focused on (1) the choice of particulars that each of the authors deemed necessary and sufficient for an accurate description, (2) what these particulars are instances of, (3) how they relate to each other, and (4) the motivations of each author for the choices made. It was found that despite the large variety in RTTs crafted, there was wide, though not total, agreement about the appropriateness of the choices made. Disagreements arose from various issues such as potential lack of orthogonality in the OBO Foundry and in some cases on what types the classes in the ontologies represent. The authors' main source of disagreement was due to different interpretations of the literature on Information Content Entities (ICEs).