Shared Decision-Making Ontology for a Healthcare Team Executing a Workflow, an Instantiation for Metastatic Spinal...

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Clinical Decision Support
• Ontology Engineering

Background:

• Shared decision-making (SDM) adoption in patient care remains limited despite its benefits.
• Integrating SDM into current healthcare practices requires structured approaches.
• Existing frameworks lack formalization for effective implementation in team-based care.

Purpose of the Study:

• To formalize shared decision-making (SDM) by developing a novel ontology.
• To integrate SDM concepts within team-based care delivery and workflow analysis.
• To establish a foundation for a decision support system for SDM.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel shared decision-making ontology.
• Formal definition of key concepts and relations within the SDM domain.
• Instantiation of the ontology for a complex patient management scenario (metastatic spinal cord compression treatment).

Main Results:

• A comprehensive ontology for shared decision-making was created.
• The ontology formally defines SDM concepts and their interrelations.
• The ontology's applicability was demonstrated through a specific clinical case.

Conclusions:

• The proposed ontology provides a formal structure for shared decision-making.
• This formalization is a crucial step towards developing decision support systems for SDM.
• The ontology supports the formalization and enhancement of patient management processes.