Hospital care watch (HCW): an ontology and rule-based intelligent patient management assistant

Hospital care watch (HCW) is a prototype medical intelligent assistant to improve patient care and safety and to reduce medical errors in the hospital setting. The system is based on an ontology of hospital care concepts including hospital activities, procedures, and policies, and insurance policies, as well as medical knowledge per se. A set of abstract rule types model general situations that need to be identified to detect potential problems and particular instantiations of those rule types identify individual situations. The system is not designed to provide medical diagnosis or other professional decision making; but rather to track the implications of such medical decisions taken by physicians and other medical professionals within the context of the guidelines and regulations of the medical environment, and the background of established medical knowledge.