FAQ: Is this just an Intellectual Pursuit?

While there is an intellectual basis for the effort of merging computer ontologies with the electronic health records in VistA, the OntoVistA effort is not about trying to create an ivory tower or free floating "mind" that knows about VistA. There are many tools that have been developed over the years, some before FileMan was created in the 1970s, and others that have only been developed in the past few years.

It is more important to use the tools to create a practical system that can meet the goals of the OntoVistA project than to create an compendium of white papers, documents, and standards. Information in such a compendium is useful and valuable, but the efforts of the OntoVistA project must be focused, so any intellectual pursuits must be harnessed to the greater goals.

The effort to create an explicit ontology for VistA can be seen as an engineering effort more than just an intellectual pursuit. The technologies of the semantic web and inference engines, as well as code and data analysis, can help us in creating partially and fully automated mechanisms to make OntoVistA into a reality. It is important that we have concrete goals to reach rather than vague formulations, as this can drive our work far more than mere speculations.