A Unified Ontological-Semantic Substrate for Physiological Simulation and Cognitive Modeling

This paper briefly describes a system that provides a constructive proof of the versatility of ontologies and ontology-based knowledge resources. The Maryland Virtual Patient (MVP) environment models a team of automatic and human agents diagnosing and treating a virtual patient. It uses a uniform ontological substrate to support both the simulation of the world outside the cognitive agents – specifically, physiological processes in the “body” of the virtual patient – and perception, reasoning and action in the “minds” of the virtual patient and other intelligent agents.