On Wed, 16 May 2001, philippe Ameline wrote:
> > Yes. My idea is to build the ontology and "inter-ontology translators" as
> > we go. Maybe Philippe's free ontology of 35000 terms will be translated
> > into English when we are ready to go into phase 2 :-).
>
> Andrew is nearly convinced !
Hi Philippe,
Thanks for your patience and efforts to educate me. While I still
believe it is possible to stitch together multiple, ad hoc ontologies into
a functional map, I am willing to explore the use of your ontology as a
possible shortcut and structure to hang these "ad hoc" ontologies
together.
Regardless, I hope my approach will allow whatever set of ontology is in
use to be easily extended and new terms incorportated as they are used by
the clinicians and researchers - along the lines that John Gage nicely
outlines in his message a few hours ago.
As I mentioned before, I believe GEHR has the same idea (regarding
extensibility through ad hoc archetypes) and we should have a very
exciting collaboration going forward.
> I hope my ontologie will be translated soon into English by John's wife.
If you are able to send the ontology to me, I will attempt to make it
available through the OIO Library. I will add the requisite fields so that
Mrs. Gage and others will be able to translate the terms through the web.
The rest of us will be able to see their progress by browsing the tree
online.
I will also make sub-trees downloadable so that users don't have to
download the entire ontology all at once. Of course, I will need your help
to understand how the data is structured to make sure I get all the
branches right.
The OIO Library already has facilities to track all editing changes and
provide access control. We can give Mrs. Gage and hopefully a growing
group of volunteers special editor's privileges. I can give public access
to view all the editing history and ability to submit comments that are
attached to each node/term in the set. This way, domain experts can start
giving feedback about the ontology.
> I think that when Karsten announced she ended scholarship (bravo), it was a
> way to say she now has time to work on German translation.
Karsten is quite familiar with the OIO Library's editorial capabilities.
Maybe in addition to coordinating German translations, he will help give
suggestions on modifications to the OIO Library software that will
specifically help our international ontology development project (IODP?).
> We just miss Spanish and Italian (and Greek, and Portugese, and Deutsch...
> what did I forget ?)
Chinese :-). I can coordinate that.
> An open component, multilingual, ontologie is certainly a great plus for
> open source, and can be a genuine exchange langage between apps.
Exactly! And to think that the ontology was originally coded in French!
Best regards,
Andrew
---
Andrew P. Ho, M.D.
OIO: Open Infrastructure for Outcomes
TxOutcome.Org (hosting OIO Library #1)
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Psychiatry, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
University of California, Los Angeles
