Formalizing and leveraging domain knowledge in the K4CARE home care platform

Semantic Knowledge Management: An Ontology-Based Framework addresses the Semantic Web from an operative point of view using theoretical approaches, methodologies, and software applications as innovative solutions to true knowledge management. This advanced title provides readers with critical steps and tools for developing a semantic based knowledge management system. This chapter proposes an agent-based architecture for home care support, whose main capability is to continuously admit and apply new medical knowledge, entered into the system, capturing and codifying implicit knowledge deriving from the medical staff. Knowledge is the fundamental catalyst in all application domains and this is particularly true especially for the medical context. Knowledge formalization, representation, exploitation, creation and sharing are some of the most complex issues related to Knowledge Management. Moreover, Artificial Intelligence techniques and Multi-Agent System (MAS) in health care are increasingly justifying the large demand for their application, since traditional techniques are often not suitable to manage complex tasks or to adapt to unexpected events. The manuscript presents also a methodology for approaching medical knowledge management, from its representation symbolism to the implementation details. The codification of health care treatments, as well as the formalization of domain knowledge, serves as an explicit, a priori asset for the agent platform implementation. The system has the capability of applying new, implicit knowledge emerging from physicians