1. OMRSE: Current status and our strategy for future development
256 Baynes St Buffall 14213
W.R. Hogan and M. Brochhausen
Division of Biomedical Informatics

2. OMRSE The Ontology of Medically Related Social Entities
based on BFO 1.1 (for the time being)
spin-off of the OGMS effort
open source, community-driven development
OBO Foundry candidate ontology
reuses IAO ontology metadata
119 classes, 7 object properties

3. Initial Motivation Capture common electronic health record data
Demographics
Gender
Marital status
Address
Healthcare provider (role)
Patient (role)
Encounter (in OGMS)

4. Existing branches role in human social process
aggregate of organizations
aggregate of organisms
geopolitical organization

5. role in human social process

6. object aggregate
Note that a nation is not self-identical to the territory it owns.
Nations—not territories—declare war.
You are sitting in a territory—not a nation.
We need one URI for the nation, and one for its (current) territory.

7. Marriage according to OMRSE
For healthcare use cases, it is the legal aspects of marriage that matter
Visitation rights
Decision making proxy
Each person in the marriage is a party to a marriage contract
(Even in common law, which even then exists in only 9 states and still requires some evidence of agreement)
The legal system recognizes these contracts and confers the rights and decision-making proxy

8. For the Skeptical…
Arkansas code, Title 9, Subtitle 2, Chapter 11, Subchapter 1
Marriage is considered in law a civil contract…
Pennsylvania Code, Part II, Chapter 11, Section 1102, Definitions
“Marriage” A civil contract…

9. And in Arkansas…
…Any one of the following persons may consent, either orally or otherwise, to any surgical or medical treatment or procedure… …
(10) Any married person, for a spouse of unsound mind;

10. And in Pennsylvania…
20 Pa. Cons. Stat (d)(1) …any member of the following classes, in descending order of priority…may act as health care representative: (i) The spouse, …

11. But aren’t there health implications of marriage?
Doctors do not recommend marriage to their single patients for its health benefits
The gap between singles and marrieds is decreasing
The only place “marital status” is captured as a discrete data element is in the patient registration system, for administrative purposes (i.e., decision making contingencies)
Mentions of marriage in the social history of patients, that go beyond mentioning “status”, usually describe the health of the interpersonal relationship, which indeed requires an ontological treatment at some point, but and because it is a different entity from the contract

12. Using OMRSE to capture demographics data

13. Use of Notation instance relation Type lower-case italics
lower-case bold
Type
First-letter uppercase, italics

14. An Instance-based Representation of “Married”
Entities:
jd John Doe
jd_mc_role J. Doe’s party to a marriage contract role
t1 Instant at which marriage contract begins to exist
Instantiations:
jd instance_of Human being
jd_mc_role instance_of Party to a marriage contract
t instance_of Temporal boundary
Relation:
jd bearer_of jd_mc_role since t1

15. Not/Never Married: No New Codes or Ontology Terms Necessary!
Entities:
jd John Doe
t2 Temporal boundary at end of J. Doe’s birth interval (or last marriage contract interval)
Instantiations:
t2 instance_of Temporal boundary
Relation:
jd lacks Party to a marriage contract with respect to bearer_of since t2

16. Not/Never Married: No New Codes or Ontology Terms Necessary!
Entities:
jd John Doe
t2 Temporal boundary at end of J. Doe’s birth interval (or last marriage contract interval)
Instantiations:
t2 instance_of Temporal boundary
Relation:
jd lacks Party to a marriage contract with respect to bearer_of since t2
John Doe does not stand in the bearer_of relation to any instance of Party to a marriage contract since t2

17. Implications for Ontology Development
Do not put ‘marital status’, ‘married’, ‘not married’, etc. in the ontology
Especially do not put ‘widowed’, ‘divorced’, or ‘married living apart’ in ontology!
Do not even fathom putting ‘newly married’, ‘spinster’, or ‘eloped’ into ontology!!!!
Instead, we need to represent marriage contracts and the roles they bring into existence

18. Benefits of This Approach
Fewer things to standardize in the ontology
Fewer terms, URIs, etc.
Fewer relations (no special relations, attributes, properties, etc. for demographics)
Greater flexibility
Can handle jurisdictional issues (where a given jurisdiction may not recognize marriage contracts created within another)
Can track history over time (e.g., divorced twice and widowed once)

19. Similar Approach to Other Demographics
Sex
jd_sex_quality inheres_in jd since t1
jd_sex_quality instance_of Male sex since t1
Gender
jd_gender_role inheres_in jd since t2
jd_gender_role instance_of Male gender since t2
Birth date
jd_birth instance_of Birth event
jd participates_in jd_birth at jdb_t
jdb_t during Jan 1, 1970

20. Example of Added Flexibility
Birthplace:
lr IUI of geographical region within the boundaries of Little Rock, AR at jdb_t
lr instance_of Geographical region at t9
jd located_in lr at jdb_t
Can add birth place with no additional tables, fields, relations, etc.
Just need an IUI for territory of Little Rock .

21. More Recent Use Cases for OMRSE
Organization
Health insurance company
Physician group practice
Trauma system
Simulating/simulation
Simulating outbreaks
Simulating patient encounters (for medical education, for example)
Socio-legal entities
Claims
Obligations

22. organization
So far OMRSE has re-used the OBI class "organization" and its definition:
"An organization is a continuant entity which can play roles, has members, and has a set of organization rules. Members of organizations are either organizations themselves or individual people. Members can bear specific organization member roles that are determined in the organization rules. The organization rules also determine how decisions are made on behalf of the organization by the organization members.'
Even though a good start, we believe that we need to be more specific regarding organizations.

23. What else is out there?
social group: a set of organisms belonging to the same species that remain together for any period of time while interacting with one another to a much greater degree than with other conspecific organisms (Wilson: Sociobiology, 1975).
informal organization: The informal organization expresses the personal objectives and goals of the individual membership. The informal organization represents an extension of the social structures that generally characterize human life – the spontaneous emergence of groups and organizations as ends in themselves (
formal organization: An organization that is established as a means for achieving defined objectives has been referred to as a formal organization. Its design specifies how goals are subdivided and reflected in subdivisions of the organization (

24. Questions Are organizations subtypes of social groups?
Are formal organizations subtypes of informal organizations?

25. Are organizations subtypes of social groups?
No (this answer runs against our initial intuitions)
Arguments
organizations are geographically spread out
members of organizations do not necessarily need to interact as massively as social groups (according to Wilson's definition)
I interact more with this group than with the members of my Academic Club in Germany
Thought:
Maybe there is a mutual subclass of social group and organization. Something like 'social aggregate of organisms'

26. Are formal organizations subtypes of informal organizations?No
Formal organizations: have group intentions
Informal organizations: organizational structures established to help each individual to pursue his/her own intention(s).
Informal vs. formal organization: possible example: vigilante committee vs. police force
Both formal and informal organizations are subtype to a common superclass 'organization'.

27. One remark regarding animal societies:
Not all kinds of social hierarchy should be regarded as an indicator of the presence of an "organization". Basic hierarchies are part of the extended phenotype of a species (insect states, alpha animals, etc.).

28. What we propose:

29. OMRSE: 'collection of organisms'
social collection of organisms
social group
organization
Legally personal organizations are an attributive collection of formal organiations.
formal organization
informal organization
legally personal organization

30. social group
A collection of organisms belonging to the same species that remain together for any period of time while interacting with one another to a much greater degree than with other conspecific organisms (based on: Wilson: Sociobiology, 1975).

31. organization
An organization is a continuant entity which can play roles, has members, and has a set of organization rules. Members of organizations are either organizations themselves or individual people. Members can bear specific organization member roles that are determined in the organization rules. The organization rules also determine how decisions are made on behalf of the organization by the organization members. (from OBI)

32. informal organization
An organization established to enable or support their members to pursue their personal objectives and goals (based on:

33. legally personal organization
Definition: A formal organization that recognized by municipal or international law has legal person (Shaw: International Law. Sixth Edition, 2008).
'legally personal organization' is a subclass to formal organization
This is an attributive collection. Which organization gets attributed legal personality differs from legal system to legal system and across time.
legal person role exists in OMRSE

34. formal organization
An organization that is established as a means for achieving defined organizational objectives. Its design specifies how goals are subdivided and reflected in subdivisions of the organization (based on:

35. legally-personal organization
A formal organization that recognized by municipal or international law has legal person (Shaw: International Law. Sixth Edition, 2008).

36. Introducing 'purely intentional entity'
based on Roman Ingarden's ontology
Tentative definition: Social or cultural entity that owes its existence to the human consciousness and is not a representation of something in reality.
PIEs ≠ ICEs
Examples: literary works, musical works

37. Examples of PIEs Superman
a specific simulation of an anthrax outbreak in New York City last May
Obviously, there are multiple subtypes of PIEs.
The examples above are examples of :
fictions (Superman)
simulations (anthrax outbreak)

38. socio-legal entities
are specified output of/revoked by/transferred by social actions
based on A. Reinach's legal theory1
All socio-legal entities ultimately originate form social act.
1 Reinach, A. (2012), The Apriori Foundations of the Civil Law. Edited by John F. Crosby. Frankfurt: ontos Verlag.

39. How are socio-legal entities transferred?
I own a piece of land.
There exists, since the land was claimed (social action), a right of ownership.
At this time it is concretized as my owner role, which is realized by me setting up “keep out” signs, selling the right to use the land for a specific period of time, etc.
Then I sell my land to Bill.
My ownership role goes out of existence and from then on the right of ownership for the land is concretized as Bill's ownership role.

40. Changed sub-hierarchy for generically dependent continuants:
Information content entity
Purely intentional entity
Socio-legal entity