Kerstin Forsberg has written an article about mind maps and how the concept of mapping the mind calls for RDF triples and formal models. She writes, “When I see these mind maps I see graphs just begging for RDF triples (subject, predicate, object)…  An interesting exercise would be to have the Parkinson’s disease example completed in the concept mapping tool (CMAP) the whole way down to SDTM. And export the mind maps using as RDF triples.”

She goes on, “When I these mind maps I can also see how easy it is to start drawing such diagrams and exporting them as representations of generic mind maps. However, to fulfill the ultimate goal to have them ’captured in a way that these can be used both for human understanding and for computer interpretation’ the ‘mind maps’ need underlying formal models of the clinical and biomedical reality. Therefore, I see an interesting connection between the high level maps for disease and clinical processes to the Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS). OGMS is an ontology of entities involved in a clinical encounter and provides a formal theory of disease that have been further elaborated by specific disease ontologies.”

Read more here.

Image: Courtesy Kerstin Forsberg