Conception of an XML-based ontology for a Web-based medical information service

In order to be useful for practice, medical information on the World Wide Web must be relevant, reliable, well designed, and easy accessible. Approaches towards improving these requirements include evidence-based medical information services such as EVIMED. This research paper considers the question of how a user can be supported in accessing requested information from EVIMED and how further, semantically related information can easily be retrieved. The presented method of resolution is based on Schmid's concept of media and on Gruber's concept of the ontology. The use of the emerging Web standard eXtensible Markup Language (XML) in order to implement it, allows for the design of a component-based solution supporting an easy adaptation of the representational vocabulary in accordance with the conceptualization of the user, i.e., the practitioner.