Towards an Ontology of Document Acts: Introducing a Document Act Template for Healthcare

Background: In current information systems the pervasive role of documents and their ability of creating new entities are often overlooked. Regularly, documents are stored as mere files without analysis of their deontic powers. In order to make intelligent management of documents a real possibility, we propose an ontological representation of document acts. Objectives: This article summarizes first steps towards a sound ontological representation of documents in healthcare organizations by providing a template structure for documents acts. Methods: We rely on the theory of document acts to develop such a template for defining pragmatic aspects of documents and to provide examples of the application in healthcare procedures. Furthermore, we show how this research contributes for the development of an OWL representation of document acts. Results: We provide a template for document acts and show its usage in clinical guidelines. Conclusion: While the definition of pragmatic aspects contributes to a clearer representation of documents acts in the healthcare domain, further development needs to be carried out regarding representation of document acts in ontologies.