MedMatch - Towards Domain Specific Semantic Matching

Ontologies are increasingly being used to address the problems of heterogeneous data sources. This has in turn often led to the challenge of heterogeneity between ontologies themselves. Semantic Matching has been seen as a potential solution to resolving ambiguities between ontologies . Whilst generic algorithms have proved successful in fields with little domain specific terminology, they have often struggled to be accurate in areas such as medicine which have their own highly specialised terminology. The MedMatch algorithm was initially created to apply semantic matching in the medical domain through the use of a domain specific background resource. This paper compares a domain specific algorithm (MedMatch) against a generic (S-Match) matching technique, before considering if MedMatch can be tailored to work with other background resources. It is concluded that this is possible, raising the prospect of domain specific semantic matching in the future.