Homeostasis imbalance process ontology: a study on COVID-19 infectious processes

One significant challenge in addressing the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is to grasp a comprehensive picture of its infectious mechanisms. We urgently need a consistent framework to capture the intricacies of its complicated viral infectious processes and diverse symptoms.

We systematized COVID-19 infectious processes through an ontological approach and provided a unified description framework of causal relationships from the early infectious stage to severe clinical manifestations based on the homeostasis imbalance process ontology (HoIP). HoIP covers a broad range of processes in the body, ranging from normal to abnormal. Moreover, our imbalance model enabled us to distinguish viral functional demands from immune defense processes, thereby supporting the development of new drugs, and our research demonstrates how ontological reasoning contributes to the identification of patients at severe risk.

The HoIP organises knowledge of COVID-19 infectious processes and related entities, such as molecules, drugs, and symptoms, with a consistent descriptive framework. HoIP is expected to harmonise the description of various heterogeneous processes and improve the interoperability of COVID-19 knowledge through the COVID-19 ontology harmonisation working group.