A development of knowledge representation for thalassemia prevention and control program

The spreading of thalassemia, the most common genetic disease in tropical areas, is increasing due to a migration thus the prevention and control program (PCP) of Thalassemia has been established. To better promote the yet unsuccessful PCP for thalassemia, ontology called PCPThalOnto is developed. The proposed ontology represents domain knowledge while a list of executable production rule is generated to represent operational knowledge. The PCPThalOnto consists of 1) class component to represent concepts of strategies, methodologies, techniques and activities of the PCP and 2) relation component to link between those classes or class and its instance. In the production rules, conditions for individual case determination are employed to execute a proper action. The well-constructed knowledge representation of PCP for thalassemia is developed as an electronic knowledge base for future applications to efficiently disseminate the underlying knowledge to people bridging the gap that deter the success of PCP.