IP23: Towards an Ontology of Schizophrenia

The paper presents an Ontology of Schizophrenia (OS) that is designed to provide a formal representation of schizophrenia-related entities crucial to the treatment and study of schizophrenia. OS is developed in accordance with the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontology) Foundry principles and constructed in compliance with Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as its upper-level ontology. It uses mid-level and domain ontologies built in conformity with BFO such as the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) and the Mental Functioning Ontology (MFO). OS is developed using Protégé 4.3 and is implemented in OWL2. Having imported BFO2.0 OWL and the development version of OGMS, OS adds approximately 30 schizophrenia-related terms and attempts to provide both formal and textual definitions for each. The terms in OS are in addition annotated with ontology metadata such as labels, textual definitions, definition sources, term editors and editor notes.