Shared Decision-Making Ontology for a Healthcare Team Executing a Workflow, an Instantiation for Metastatic Spinal Cord Compression Management

Regardless of potential benefits and better outcomes, adoption of shared decision-making between a patient and providers involved in his/her care is still in its infancy. This paper intends to fill this gap by formalizing shared decision-making, situating it as part of team-based care delivery, and incorporating workflow concepts allowing for identification of shared decision-making tasks. We accomplish that by creating novel shared decision-making ontology which constitutes the first step required in the development of a decision support system for shared decision-making. The proposed ontology formally defines and describes the key concepts and relations in the shared decision-making domain and lays the foundation for the formalization and support of the patient management process. We illustrate the applicability of the proposed ontology by creating its instantiation for the complex patient management scenario involving shared decision-making about the treatment of metastatic spinal cord compression.