Adapting the Harmonized Data Quality Framework for Ontology Quality Assessment

Ontologies play an important role in the representation, standardization, and integration of biomedical data, but are known to have data quality (DQ) issues. We aimed to understand if the Harmonized Data Quality Framework (HDQF), developed to standardize electronic health record DQ assessment strategies, could be used to improve ontology quality assessment. A novel set of 14 ontology checks was developed. These DQ checks were aligned to the HDQF and examined by HDQF developers. The ontology checks were evaluated using 11 Open Biomedical Ontology Foundry ontologies. 85.7% of the ontology checks were successfully aligned to at least 1 HDQF category. Accommodating the unmapped DQ checks (n=2), required modifying an original HDQF category and adding a new Data Dependency category. While all of the ontology checks were mapped to an HDQF category, not all HDQF categories were represented by an ontology check presenting opportunities to strategically develop new ontology checks. The HDQF is a valuable resource and this work demonstrates its ability to categorize ontology quality assessment strategies.