OMRSE: Current status and our strategy for future development

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OMRSE Current status and our strategy for
future development
256 Baynes St Buffall 14213

• W.R. Hogan and M. Brochhausen
• Division of Biomedical Informatics

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OMRSE

• The Ontology of Medically Related Social Entities
• based on BFO 1.1 (for the time being)
• spin-off of the OGMS effort
• open source, community-driven development
• OBO Foundry candidate ontology
• reuses IAO ontology metadata
• 119 classes, 7 object properties

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Initial Motivation

• Capture common electronic health record data
• Demographics
• Gender
• Marital status
• Address
• Healthcare provider (role)
• Patient (role)
• Encounter (in OGMS)

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Existing branches

• role in human social process
• aggregate of organizations
• aggregate of organisms
• geopolitical organization

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role in human social process
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object aggregate
Note that a nation is not self-identical to the
territory it owns. Nationsnot
territoriesdeclare war. You are sitting in a
territorynot a nation. We need one URI for the
nation, and one for its (current) territory.
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Marriage according to OMRSE

• For healthcare use cases, it is the legal aspects
  of marriage that matter
• Visitation rights
• Decision making proxy
• Each person in the marriage is a party to a
  marriage contract
• (Even in common law, which even then exists in
  only 9 states and still requires some evidence of
  agreement)
• The legal system recognizes these contracts and
  confers the rights and decision-making proxy

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For the Skeptical

• Arkansas code, Title 9, Subtitle 2, Chapter 11,
  Subchapter 1
• Marriage is considered in law a civil contract
• Pennsylvania Code, Part II, Chapter 11, Section
  1102, Definitions
• Marriage A civil contract

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And in Arkansas

• Any one of the following persons may consent,
  either orally or otherwise, to any surgical or
  medical treatment or procedure
• (10) Any married person, for a spouse of unsound
  mind

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And in Pennsylvania

• 20 Pa. Cons. Stat. 5461 (d)(1)
• any member of the following classes, in
  descending order of prioritymay act as health
  care representative
• (i) The spouse,

http//law.onecle.com/pennsylvania/decedents-estat
es-and-fiduciaries/00.054.061.000.html
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But arent there health implications of marriage?

• Doctors do not recommend marriage to their single
  patients for its health benefits
• The gap between singles and marrieds is
  decreasing
• The only place marital status is captured as a
  discrete data element is in the patient
  registration system, for administrative purposes
  (i.e., decision making contingencies)
• Mentions of marriage in the social history of
  patients, that go beyond mentioning status,
  usually describe the health of the interpersonal
  relationship, which indeed requires an
  ontological treatment at some point, but and
  because it is a different entity from the contract

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Using OMRSE to capture demographics data
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Use of Notation

• instance
• lower-case italics
• relation
• lower-case bold
• Type
• First-letter uppercase, italics

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An Instance-based Representation of Married

• Entities
• jd John Doe
• jd_mc_role J. Does party to a marriage contract
  role
• t1 Instant at which marriage contract begins
  to exist
• Instantiations
• jd instance_of Human being
• jd_mc_role instance_of Party to a marriage
  contract
• t1 instance_of Temporal boundary
• Relation
• jd bearer_of jd_mc_role since t1

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Not/Never Married No New Codes or Ontology Terms
Necessary!

• Entities
• jd John Doe
• t2 Temporal boundary at end of J. Does birth
  interval (or last marriage contract interval)
• Instantiations
• t2 instance_of Temporal boundary
• Relation
• jd lacks Party to a marriage contract with
  respect to bearer_of since t2

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Not/Never Married No New Codes or Ontology Terms
Necessary!

• Entities
• jd John Doe
• t2 Temporal boundary at end of J. Does birth
  interval (or last marriage contract interval)
• Instantiations
• t2 instance_of Temporal boundary
• Relation
• jd lacks Party to a marriage contract with
  respect to bearer_of since t2

John Doe does not stand in the bearer_of relation
to any instance of Party to a marriage contract
since t2
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Implications for Ontology Development

• Do not put marital status, married, not
  married, etc. in the ontology
• Especially do not put widowed, divorced, or
  married living apart in ontology!
• Do not even fathom putting newly married,
  spinster, or eloped into ontology!!!!
• Instead, we need to represent marriage contracts
  and the roles they bring into existence

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Benefits of This Approach

• Fewer things to standardize in the ontology
• Fewer terms, URIs, etc.
• Fewer relations (no special relations,
  attributes, properties, etc. for demographics)
• Greater flexibility
• Can handle jurisdictional issues (where a given
  jurisdiction may not recognize marriage contracts
  created within another)
• Can track history over time (e.g., divorced twice
  and widowed once)

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Similar Approach to Other Demographics

• Sex
• jd_sex_quality inheres_in jd
  since t1
• jd_sex_quality instance_of Male sex since
  t1
• Gender
• jd_gender_role inheres_in jd since t2
• jd_gender_role instance_of Male gender since
  t2
• Birth date
• jd_birth instance_of Birth event
• jd participates_in jd_birth at
  jdb_t
• jdb_t during Jan 1, 1970

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Example of Added Flexibility

• Birthplace
• lr IUI of geographical region within the
  boundaries of Little Rock, AR at jdb_t
• lr instance_of Geographical region at t9
• jd located_in lr at jdb_t

Can add birth place with no additional tables,
fields, relations, etc. Just need an IUI for
territory of Little Rock .
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More Recent Use Cases for OMRSE

• Organization
• Health insurance company
• Physician group practice
• Trauma system
• Simulating/simulation
• Simulating outbreaks
• Simulating patient encounters (for medical
  education, for example)
• Socio-legal entities
• Claims
• Obligations

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organization

• So far OMRSE has re-used the OBI class
  "organization" and its definition
• "An organization is a continuant entity which can
  play roles, has members, and has a set of
  organization rules. Members of organizations are
  either organizations themselves or individual
  people. Members can bear specific organization
  member roles that are determined in the
  organization rules. The organization rules also
  determine how decisions are made on behalf of the
  organization by the organization members.'
• Even though a good start, we believe that we need
  to be more specific regarding organizations.

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What else is out there?
social group a set of organisms belonging to the
same species that remain together for any period
of time while interacting with one another to a
much greater degree than with other conspecific
organisms (Wilson Sociobiology, 1975). informal
organization The informal organization expresses
the personal objectives and goals of the
individual membership. The informal organization
represents an extension of the social structures
that generally characterize human life  the
spontaneous emergence of groups and organizations
as ends in themselves (http//en.wikipedia.org/wik
i/Organization). formal organization An
organization that is established as a means for
achieving defined objectives has been referred to
as a formal organization. Its design specifies
how goals are subdivided and reflected in
subdivisions of the organization
(http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organization).
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Questions

1. Are organizations subtypes of social groups?
2. Are formal organizations subtypes of informal
   organizations?

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Are organizations subtypes of social groups?

• No (this answer runs against our initial
  intuitions)
• Arguments
• organizations are geographically spread out
• members of organizations do not necessarily need
  to interact as massively as social groups
  (according to Wilson's definition)
• I interact more with this group than with the
  members of my Academic Club in Germany
• Thought
• Maybe there is a mutual subclass of social group
  and organization. Something like 'social
  aggregate of organisms'

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Are formal organizations subtypes of informal
organizations?

• No
• Formal organizations have group intentions
• Informal organizations organizational structures
  established to help each individual to pursue
  his/her own intention(s).
• Informal vs. formal organization possible
  example vigilante committee vs. police force
• Both formal and informal organizations are
  subtype to a common superclass 'organization'.

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One remark regarding animal societies

• Not all kinds of social hierarchy should be
  regarded as an indicator of the presence of an
  "organization". Basic hierarchies are part of the
  extended phenotype of a species (insect states,
  alpha animals, etc.).

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What we propose
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OMRSE 'collection of organisms'
social collection of organisms
social group
organization
Legally personal organizations are an attributive
collection of formal organiations.
formal organization
informal organization
legally personal organization
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social group

• A collection of organisms belonging to the same
  species that remain together for any period of
  time while interacting with one another to a much
  greater degree than with other conspecific
  organisms (based on Wilson Sociobiology, 1975).

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organization

• An organization is a continuant entity which can
  play roles, has members, and has a set of
  organization rules. Members of organizations are
  either organizations themselves or individual
  people. Members can bear specific organization
  member roles that are determined in the
  organization rules. The organization rules also
  determine how decisions are made on behalf of the
  organization by the organization members. (from
  OBI)

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informal organization

• An organization established to enable or support
  their members to pursue their personal objectives
  and goals (based on http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
  Organization).

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legally personal organization

• Definition A formal organization that recognized
  by municipal or international law has legal
  person (Shaw International Law. Sixth Edition,
  2008).
• 'legally personal organization' is a subclass to
  formal organization
• This is an attributive collection. Which
  organization gets attributed legal personality
  differs from legal system to legal system and
  across time.
• legal person role exists in OMRSE

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formal organization

• An organization that is established as a means
  for achieving defined organizational objectives.
  Its design specifies how goals are subdivided and
  reflected in subdivisions of the organization
  (based on http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizati
  on).

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legally-personal organization

• A formal organization that recognized by
  municipal or international law has legal person
  (Shaw International Law. Sixth Edition, 2008).

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Introducing 'purely intentional entity'

• based on Roman Ingarden's ontology
• Tentative definition Social or cultural entity
  that owes its existence to the human
  consciousness and is not a representation of
  something in reality.
• PIEs ? ICEs
• Examples literary works, musical works

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Examples of PIEs

• Superman
• a specific simulation of an anthrax outbreak in
  New York City last May

• Obviously, there are multiple subtypes of PIEs.
• The examples above are examples of
• fictions (Superman)
• simulations (anthrax outbreak)

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socio-legal entities

• are specified output of/revoked by/transferred by
  social actions
• based on A. Reinach's legal theory1
• http//purl.obolibrary.org/obo/iao/d-acts.owl
• All socio-legal entities ultimately originate
  form social act.
• 1 Reinach, A. (2012), The Apriori Foundations of
  the Civil Law. Edited by John F. Crosby.
  Frankfurt ontos Verlag.

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How are socio-legal entities transferred?

• I own a piece of land.
• There exists, since the land was claimed (social
  action), a right of ownership.
• At this time it is concretized as my owner role,
  which is realized by me setting up keep out
  signs, selling the right to use the land for a
  specific period of time, etc.
• Then I sell my land to Bill.
• My ownership role goes out of existence and from
  then on the right of ownership for the land is
  concretized as Bill's ownership role.

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Changed sub-hierarchy for generically dependent
continuants

• Generically dependent continuant
• Information content entity
• Purely intentional entity
• Socio-legal entity