Construction of Traditional Chinese Medicine Ontology for Pediatric Asthma

A traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) ontology for pediatric asthma as a tool for subsequent research and applications was developed in this study. Relevant knowledge sharing and reasoning were achieved based on the ontology. OWL was used for describing the ontology language and the “seven-step method” was proposed for ontology construction. The knowledge of pediatric asthma in TCM was extracted manually using protégé (5.6.2) for implementing the knowledge presentation and domain modeling of pediatric asthma in TCM. A total of 63 classes, 276 instances, 16 objects, and 4 data attributes were included in the ontology construction. The knowledge related to pediatric asthma in TCM was organized and represented by the ontology in a more comprehensive manner, achieving the semantic representation of the knowledge of pediatric asthma. The ontology provided knowledge support and reasoning basis for the co-construction and sharing of the knowledge base and the construction of clinical decision support system in the future. Meanwhile, a useful exploration approach of TCM modernization was described.