Use of ontologies for monitoring electronic health records for compliance with clinical practice guidelines.

Ontologies can assist with translating information from an electronic health record to a clinical practice guideline and reformatting it into a compliance report. A 2009 literature search reviews publications on the use of ontologies to support automated reporting of compliance with clinical practice guidelines via electronic health records. Research stage, data-pulling capabilities, ontologies used, and issues raised are some of the comparative data pulled from 13 articles from the literature review results. Suggestions for further research are given.