Developing a Computational Representation of Human Physical Activity and Exercise Using Open Ontology-Based Approach: A Tai Chi Use Case

Many studies have examined the impact of exercise and other physical activities in influencing the health outcomes of individuals. These physical activities entail an intricate sequence and series of physical anatomy, physiological movement, movement of the anatomy, etc. To better understand how these components interact with one another and their downstream impact on health outcomes, there needs to be an information model that conceptualizes all entities involved. In this study, we introduced our early development of an ontology model to computationally describe human physical activities and the various entities that compose each activity. We developed an open-sourced biomedical ontology called the Kinetic Human Movement Ontology that reused OBO Foundry terminologies and encoded in OWL2. We applied this ontology in modeling and linking a specific Tai Chi movement. The contribution of this work could enable modeling of information relating to human physical activity, like exercise, and lead towards information standardization of human movement for analysis. Future work will include expanding our ontology to include more expressive information and completely modeling entire sets of movement from human physical activity.