Development and evaluation of the COntextualised and Personalised Physical activity and Exercise Recommendations (COPPER) Ontology.

Background: Personalised recommendations for action and coping plans for physical activity (PA) may reduce user burden and increase plan quality. Ontologies are a promising alternative to existing black-box approaches for creating such personalised recommendations as they are able to integrate knowledge from domain experts, input from end-users and data. Here, we report the development of an ontology of physical activities action and coping plans relevant for primary prevention.

Methods: Ontology specification was carried out using literature research, requirement analysis using use case scenarios, and decision-tree workshops. Conceptualisation combined input from existing theories and classification systems, end-users, domain experts and data sets to create lists of concepts, labels, definitions, properties and relationships. Logic rules were created during ontology formalization, and the entire ontology was translated into Web Ontology Language using Protégé. The ontology was checked for logical consistency. The process was evaluated using the Open Biomedical and Biological Ontology (OBO) Repository Principles, and the resulting recommendations using competency questions and use cases.

Results: The ontology consists of an upper-level ontology, and lower-level ontologies for personal profile, planning, activity, context, barrier, and coping strategy. The final ontology consists of 288 classes, 9 data properties and 64 object properties. Development followed OBO ontology design principles. The ontology is logically and structurally consistent, and resulting recommendations were deemed relevant based on competency questions and use cases.

Conclusions: This is the first ontology focusing on physical activity that (1) follows OBO design principles, including being openly available, (2) includes profile and context information and (3) maps knowledge regarding barriers and coping strategies. It can be used as the base of decision-support systems for action and coping planning for physical activity in primary prevention in Western-European adults, and is easily adaptable to other target groups. Challenges and opportunities of ontologies in health promotion are discussed.