Semantic Web-relaterad avhandling
Marie Gustafsson
Jag har varit med i SSWIG-listan ett bra tag, men jag har aldrig
presenterat mig eller skrivit något. Jag har varit doktorand inom
datavetenskap vid Högskolan i Skövde (inskriven på Chalmers) och
disputerade den 15 juni med avhandlingen "SOMWeb: Supporting a
Distributed Clinical Community of Practice Using Semantic Web
Technologies". Jag har bland annat undersökt användandet av OWL och
RDF för kliniska formulär, terminologier och undersökningar. I
avhandlingen presenteras även "lessons learned" kring detta.
Abstractet finns i slutet av mailet och hela avhandlingen kan hämtas
här: http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/cpl/record/index.xsql?pubid=94030
Det händer ju relativt lite vad gäller SW i Sverige. Om någon är
intresserad av att samarbeta vore det kul. Eller kanske en pubkväll i
Malmö, om det finns några fler här nere?
Hälsningar
Marie Gustafsson
http://www.linkedin.com/in/gustafssonmarie
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SOMWeb: Supporting a Distributed Clinical Community of Practice Using
Semantic Web Technologies
This thesis concerns supporting the collaboration and knowledge
sharing of distributed clinicians of oral medicine, a sub-discipline
of dentistry. The Swedish Oral Medicine Network (SOMNet) holds monthly
telephone conferences where a group of clinicians discuss interesting
and difficult cases, which distinguishes it from one-to-one
teleconsultations. SOMNet can be seen as a distributed community of
practice, that is, a group of people sharing a concern and who
interact regularly to extend their individual and collective
expertise. Related to this, several topics need further investigation:
How can geographically distributed clinical collaboration be
characterized? What is appropriate functionality for a Web-based
system supporting such collaborations? What are the impacts of such
systems on collaboration? Further, Semantic Web technologies, such as
the Web Ontology Language (OWL), have been proposed as a means of
enhancing knowledge sharing. What are benefits and limitations of
using these technologies to encode domain knowledge in oral medicine
and to support clinical collaboration, and what practical issues face
developers? The developed system, SOMWeb, focuses on functionality for
meetings and structured cases, and has been regularly used for three
years. Interviews, observations, a questionnaire, system log analysis,
and case analysis were used to study SOMNet's collaboration and
identify system impacts. The documentation of the forms of
collaboration in SOMNet can serve as a model for other groups of
clinicians wishing to establish a distributed collaboration. SOMNet's
meetings provide a necessary rhythm for the community and the cases
give context to the clinicians' learning which point toward that the
centrality of meetings and cases in a tool will benefit collaboration.
Impacts on SOMNet's collaboration include enabling the participation
of a wider range of clinics. Factors influencing this are the more
accessible submission process as well as the increased tangibility of
the collaboration. The thesis also provides recommendations for
developers of systems supporting clinical collaboration and knowledge
sharing. The use of OWL in examination descriptions has enabled
reasoning over cases in the system to provide improved case browsing.
At the same time, limitations were found in using OWL for examination
templates. Based on the lessons learned in this development, the
thesis provides recommendations for using Semantic Web technologies,
which can be of value for other developers and to guide future
research.