A Semantic Web Technology Based Approach to Identify Hypertensive Patients for Follow-Up/Recall

We present an ontology based approach to identify hypertensive patients who show non-adherence to prescribed medication. Using the Web ontology language (OWL), we have developed an ontology that includes patient prescription details, medication possession ratios (MPRs) and blood pressure measurements (together with other patient related information) that has been populated with production electronic medical record (EMR) data from a general medical practice in New Zealand. We have written queries using the semantic query-enhanced Web rule language (SQWRL) to query this ontology to determine patients who have lapsed medication while having a low MPR. We also discuss some practical issues related to patient recall based on EMR data, as well as the suitability of the proposed scheme.