Enabling Reasoning on the Web: Introducing a Test-Bed Simulation Framework

The transformation of a document-based medical guideline into a computer-based decision support is a time-consuming and error-prone activity. One way to alleviate this burden is by automating as much as possible the knowledge intensive tasks within the life cycle of medical guidelines. This paper presents a test-bed simulation framework that aims to take advantages of both CommonKADS methodology and semantic Web technologies (OWL, SWRL, and OWL-S) to support automatic reasoning of knowledge-intensive tasks within guidelines. Based on the experiments conducted so far, the major benefit of the test-bed simulation is to enable experiments (simulations of clinical situations) that allow overcoming the main barriers to successfully express medical guidelines in an executable form compatible with electronic healthcare records.