Ontological Clarity and Comprehensionin Health Data Models

摘要

Conceptual modeling forms an important part of systems analysis. If this is done incorrectly or incompletely, there can bernserious implications for the resultant system, specifically in terms of rework and useability. One approach to improving thernconceptual modelling process is to evaluate how well the model represents reality. Emergence of the Bunge-Wand-Weberrn(BWW) ontological model introduced a platform to classify and compare the grammar of conceptual modelling languages.rnThis work applies the BWW theory to a real world example in the health arena. The general practice computing group datarnmodel was developed using the Barker Entity Relationship Modelling technique. We describe an experiment, grounded inrnontological theory, which evaluates how well the GPCG data model is understood by domain experts. The results show thatrnwith the exception of the use of entities to represent events, the raw model is better understood by domain experts.