An ontology-based approach to enhance querying capabilities of general practice medicine for better management of hypertension

摘要

BackgroundHypertension is one of the most prevalent chronic conditions and is directly correlated to deadly risks; yet, despite the availability of effective treatment, there is still clear room for improving patient outcomes. Use of relational databases is widespread for storing patient data, but formulating queries to identify patients whose clinical management can be improved is challenging due to the temporal nature of chronic illness and the mismatch in levels of abstraction between key management concepts and coded clinical data.