Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33319711›Full record

ArticleBMC medical informatics and decision making2020

Analysis of readability and structural accuracy in SNOMED CT.

Francisco Abad-Navarro, Manuel Quesada-Martínez, Astrid Duque-Ramos, Jesualdo Tomás Fernández-Breis

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in BMC medical informatics and decision making, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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1citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

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3 · Its place in the literature

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1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Francisco Abad-NavarroDepartamento de Informática y Sistemas, Universidad de Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain.ORCID 0000-0003-0201-3115
Manuel Quesada-MartínezCenter of Operations Research (CIO), Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Avda. de la Universidad, 03202, Alicante, Spain.ORCID 0000-0003-0487-308X
Astrid Duque-RamosFacultad de Ingenierías, Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana, Carrera 55 49, 050010, Medellín, Colombia.ORCID 0000-0001-6233-6384
Jesualdo Tomás Fernández-BreisDepartamento de Informática y Sistemas, Universidad de Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30100, Murcia, Spain. jfernand@um.es.ORCID 0000-0002-7558-2880

Funding

European Regional Development Fund TIN2017-85949-C2-1-RFundación Séneca 20963/PI/18Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España TIN2017-85949-C2-1-R
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe increasing adoption of ontologies in biomedical research and the growing number of ontologies available have made it necessary to assure the quality of these resources. Most of the well-established ontologies, such as the Gene Ontology or SNOMED CT, have their own quality assurance processes. These have demonstrated their usefulness for the maintenance of the resources but are unable to detect all of the modelling flaws in the ontologies. Consequently, the development of efficient and effective quality assurance methods is needed.

methodsHere, we propose a series of quantitative metrics based on the processing of the lexical regularities existing in the content of the ontology, to analyse readability and structural accuracy. The readability metrics account for the ratio of labels, descriptions, and synonyms associated with the ontology entities. The structural accuracy metrics evaluate how two ontology modelling best practices are followed: (1) lexically suggest locally define (LSLD), that is, if what is expressed in natural language for humans is available as logical axioms for machines; and (2) systematic naming, which accounts for the amount of label content of the classes in a given taxonomy shared.

resultsWe applied the metrics to different versions of SNOMED CT. Both readability and structural accuracy metrics remained stable in time but could capture some changes in the modelling decisions in SNOMED CT. The value of the LSLD metric increased from 0.27 to 0.31, and the value of the systematic naming metric was around 0.17. We analysed the readability and structural accuracy in the SNOMED CT July 2019 release. The results showed that the fulfilment of the structural accuracy criteria varied among the SNOMED CT hierarchies. The value of the metrics for the hierarchies was in the range of 0-0.92 (LSLD) and 0.08-1 (systematic naming). We also identified the cases that did not meet the best practices.

conclusionsWe generated useful information about the engineering of the ontology, making the following contributions: (1) a set of readability metrics, (2) the use of lexical regularities to define structural accuracy metrics, and (3) the generation of quality assurance information for SNOMED CT.

Indexed as

Biological OntologiesSystematized Nomenclature of MedicineComprehensionGene OntologyHumansLanguageNatural Language ProcessingOntologiesQuality assuranceQuality metricsReadabilityStructural accuracy

Identifiers

PMID33319711
PMCPMC7737250

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.