A Web Application(Asthmaontoapp) based on Ontology using SWRL Rules for the Diagnosis of Asthma

Abstract

Asthma is a chronic disease of the airways of the lungs caused by inflammation and narrowing of theairways. Asthma patients are sometimes misdiagnosed because of the similarity of asthma symptoms toother respiratory diseases. This leads to administering inappropriate medications, and thus the patient'scondition worsens. In this search, we propose a new approach based on ontology, the aiming this methodis that to develop a system that can diagnose asthma and suggest the appropriate treatment for eachpatient. The proposed approach consists of three steps: the knowledge base, four modules that act asmediators between the user interface and ontology, and the web application that act as an interface to theapproach. Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL) was used for asthma diagnosis. The proposed systemwas tested using several patients previously diagnosed with asthma. The obtained results showed that theapproach could diagnose the disease and recommend treatments. It diagnosed 56 out of 59 (accuracy rateof 94.91%) and correctly recommended treatment for 20 out of 22 patients (accuracy rate of 90.9%). Theapproach also showed good speed in the previous two procedures, as it took 3.6 seconds to diagnose and15.4 seconds to recommend the appropriate treatment.