Australia’s National Health Programs: An Ontological Mapping

Australasian Journal of Information Systems

Arkalgud Ramaprasad³  Ghassan Beydoun⁴  Thant Syn¹  Linda Dawson²  Khin Than Win² 

[1] Texas A & M International University;University of Wollongong;University of Illinois at Chicago;Univerisity of Technology Sydney

关键词: ontology;    health initiatives;    health program;    ontological framework;   

DOI  :  10.3127/ajis.v20i0.1335

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: University of Canberra * Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering

【 摘 要 】

Australia has a large number of health program initiatives whose comprehensive assessment will help refine and redefine priorities by highlighting areas of emphasis, under-emphasis, and non-emphasis. The objectives of our research are to: (a) systematically map all the programs onto an ontological framework, and (b) systemically analyse their relative emphases at different levels of granularity. We mapped all the health program initiatives onto an ontology with five dimensions, namely: (a) Policy-scope, (b) Policy-focus, (c) Outcomes, (d) Type of care, and (e) Population served. Each dimension is expanded into a taxonomy of its constituent elements. Each combination of elements from the five dimensions is a possible policy initiative component. There are 30,030 possible components encapsulated in the ontology. It includes, for example: (a) National financial policies on accessibility of preventive care for family, and (b) Local-urban regulatory policies on cost of palliative care for individual-aged. Four of the authors mapped all of Australia’s health programs and initiatives on to the ontology. Visualizations of the data are used to highlight the relative emphases in the program initiatives. The dominant emphasis of the program initiatives is: [National] [educational, personnel-physician, information] policies on [accessibility, quality] of [preventive, wellness] care for the [community]. However, although (a) information is emphasized technology is not; and (b) accessibility and quality are emphasized cost, satisfaction, and quality are not. The ontology and the results of the mapping can help systematically reassess and redirect the relative emphases of the programs and initiatives from a systemic perspective.

【 授权许可】

Unknown