The Logic of Surveillance Guidelines: An Analysis of Vaccine Adverse Event Reports from an Ontological Perspective

摘要

BackgroundWhen increased rates of adverse events following immunization are detected, regulatory action can be taken by public health agencies. However to be interpreted reports of adverse events must be encoded in a consistent way. Regulatory agencies rely on guidelines to help determine the diagnosis of the adverse events. Manual application of these guidelines is expensive, time consuming, and open to logical errors. Representing these guidelines in a format amenable to automated processing can make this process more efficient.