An object-oriented approach to knowledge representation in a biomedical domain

An object-oriented approach has been applied to the different stages involved in developing a knowledge base about insulin metabolism. At an early stage the separation of terminological and assertional knowledge was made. The terminological component was developed by medical experts and represented in CORE. An object-oriented knowledge acquisition process was applied to the assertional knowledge. A frame description is proposed which includes features like states and events, inheritance and collaboration. States and events are formalized with qualitative calculus. The terminological knowledge was very useful in the development of the assertional component. It assisted in understanding the problem domain, and in the implementation stage, it assisted in building good inheritance hierarchies.