Design of schistosomiasis ontology (IDOSCHISTO) extending the infectious disease ontology.

Epidemiological monitoring of the schistosomiasis' spreading brings together many practitioners working at different levels of granularity (biology, host individual, host population), who have different perspectives (biology, clinic and epidemiology) on the same phenomenon. Biological perspective deals with pathogens (e.g. life cycle) or physiopathology while clinical perspective deals with hosts (e.g. healthy or infected host, diagnosis, treatment, etc.). In an epidemiological perspective corresponding to the host population level of granularity, the schistosomiasis disease is characterized according to the way (causes, risk factors, etc.) it spreads in this population over space and time. In this paper we provide an ontological analysis and design for the Schistosomiasis domain knowledge and spreading dynamics. IDOSCHISTO - the schistosomiasis ontology - is designed as an extension of the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO). This ontology aims at supporting the schistosomiasis monitoring process during a spreading crisis by enabling data integration, semantic interoperability, for collaborative work on one hand and for risk analysis and decision making on the other hand.