Knowledge representation in pharmacology. A possible application area for the Arden Syntax?

In 1990 the Arden Syntax was proposed as a first version of a standardized syntax for the representation of medical knowledge. For the evaluation of the practicability of this first release we have analyzed the medical and pharmacological knowledge applied in the process of drug prescription. The separation of declarative (e.g. in a semantic network) and procedural knowledge is a basic issue of our research. We therefore propose to further extend the Arden syntax with declarative knowledge representation facilities. One way to do this may be the incorporation of a standardized medical data dictionary (e.g. the UMLS Metathesaurus) which promotes the representation of medical terms in a semantic network. Furthermore the problem of 'institution-specific knowledge', which is especially important for the issue of knowledge sharing between different institutions, is analyzed based on examples of knowledge modules for monitoring drug allergies and drug-drug-interactions.