Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
from logic as dedicated to theory development and programming of rule bases. It
is surely intended for the latter, but it is constructed in the manner like the former.
Even worse, description logic has severe difficulties to include reasoning mecha-
nisms, which means that this logic as a partial ontology remains on the logic lev-
els including signatures, terms and sentences only, and even being rather informal
about them.
Partial ontology
is taken to mean information (databases) and knowledge (guide-
lines) encoded in logic where parts of the logic structure are missing. The traditional
meaning of ontology, such as in web ontology, indeed either completely neglects or
is intentionally informal in particular about the sentential and inferential parts of
logic. Partial ontology, in particular as seen in the case of SNOMED CT, is more
like a mereology since the meronomic type hierarchies in SNOMED CT still seek
to find a proper inclusion of deductive elements, and therefore in some sense dis-
qualifies to be called ontology. Another way of speaking is to say that nomenclature
is not sufficient, since we need a
calculus of nomenclature
1
.
26.4
Ageing
The overall objectives of the Observe-Assess-Decide (OAD) process in elderly care
is to provide a complete system for observation, assessment and decision-making
focused on home care and prolongation of independent living, by providing a
necessary and sufficient ontology and assessment scale based information, thereby
enabling well-founded predictions and continuous monitoring of decline and pro-
grediation on both individual as well as group level. OAD aims to facilitate both
dynamical settings of individual care level for care provision at point-of-need as
well as demographic change based accurate socio-economic modelling supporting
strategic regional management of ageing.
The lack of regional strategies together with scattered and unstructured guide-
lines for prevention, detection and intervention related to older persons' decline in
cognitive and functional capabilities, are the most serious obstacles in the way of
a sustainable development of supportive environments for the elderly. Further, the
lack of well-structured guidelines and well-organized utility of assessment and, in
particular, rigorous assessment based decision-making and care provisioning, leads
to overlaps and inefficiency, and even worse, to subjective decision-making and care
processes that cannot be measured nor evaluated.
There are assessment scales that are more suitable for home care, where other
scales might be seen more suitable for nursing homes, and so on and so forth. For
example, on non-cognitive aspects of dementia, some of the first parts of NPI might
be more effectively used in home care, whereas Behave-AD and CMAI (focusing
on agitation) are more useful in residential care and hospital wards.
1
Stanislaw Lesniewski (1886-1939), a Polish logician contemporary with Alfred Tarski and
Jan Lukasiewicz, used ontology in the sense of a
calculus of names
in his Grundzüge [15].
