Ontological Description of the Basic Skills of Surgery

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been receiving increasing attention in the medical field. For AI to be successfully applied to surgical training and certification, ontological and semantic description of clinical training procedures will be necessary. This study proposes a method for the ontological analysis of basic endoscopic surgery skills. Surgical procedures learned during basic training using a training box for exercises such as pegboard, pattern cutting, and suturing, were analyzed and described as ontological procedures. Surgical maneuvers for endoscopic surgery performed in the training box were successfully classified and described by referencing ontological concepts. Such ontological descriptions can be applied in many ways, for example, computerized evaluation of medical training and certification, automated robotic surgical systems, and medical safety check and alert systems. The need for simple and practical methods for the ontological description of clinical medicine was also revealed in this study.