LABO is an ontology formalizing laboratory tests prescriptions and reporting documents. It is built according to the OBO Foundry methodology, and is a component of a core ontological model that aims to enable interoperability between various clinical data sources in the context of a Learning Health System.
laboratory test; OBO Foundry; information content entity
Learning Health Systems (LHS) analyze health information
generated from patients in order to provide secondary use of
clinical data and decision support. They rely on access to a wide
range of clinical data, such as drug prescriptions or laboratory test
prescriptions and results, usually scattered across numerous
heterogeneous information systems (
Applied ontologies can support a common, source-independent
representation of these data, thus helping to solve the "Tower of
Babel problem" in medical informatics. An ontology has already
been developed for drug prescriptions: the Prescription of DRugs
Ontology (PDRO, read "Pedro") (
LABO has been developped according to a realist approach based
on the Basic Formal Ontology. It represents informational entities
directing and reporting on laboratory tests as subclasses of
IAO:Information content entity ("ICE") (
A central class in LABO is Laboratory test directive item, which is a subclass of IAO:Action specification, and is defined as: “An action specification that directs one or several laboratory tests and such that none of its proper parts directs some but not all of those laboratory tests.” This definition is motivated by the fact that some instructions ("complete blood count", for example) direct several distinct tests (more than a dozen for the complete blood count: hematocrit, hemoglobin, etc.; but no part of the ICE 'complete blood count' does specifically directly a hematocrit test, a hemoglobin test, etc.). We define a Directed laboratory test group as the mereological sum of laboratory tests directed by a Laboratory test directive item. In our example, the item 'complete blood count' written on a laboratory test prescription directs an instance of Directed laboratory test group composed by an instance of Hematocrit test, an instance of Hemoglobin test, etc. A Laboratory result is a specified output of a OGMS:Laboratory test, and LABO represents several subclasses of Laboratory result to allow the representation of ratio, scalar, textual or range results. A Laboratory test result item is about a OGMS:Laboratory test and has as part a Laboratory result, as well as ICEs specifying the time and specimen characteristic. It is a part of a Laboratory test reporting group, which also encompass the corresponding Laboratory test directive item.
The LABO ontology formalizes laboratory test prescriptions, results and reporting, as well as their parts. Along with PDRO, it is a part of a core ontological model to enable interoperability between various clinical data sources in a LHS context.