A viewpoint-based case-based reasoning approach utilising an enterprise architecture ontology for experience management

The accessibility of project knowledge obtained from experiences is an important and crucial issue in enterprises. This information need about project knowledge can be different from one person to another depending on the different roles he or she has. Therefore, a new ontology-based case-based reasoning (OBCBR) approach that utilises an enterprise ontology is introduced in this article to improve the accessibility of this project knowledge. Utilising an enterprise ontology improves the case-based reasoning (CBR) system through the systematic inclusion of enterprisespecific knowledge. This enterprise-specific knowledge is captured using the overall structure given by the enterprise ontology named ArchiMEO, which is a partial ontological realisation of the enterprise architecture framework (EAF) ArchiMate. This ontological representation, containing historical cases and specific enterprise domain knowledge, is applied in a new OBCBR approach. To support the different information needs of different stakeholders, this OBCBR approach has been built in such a way that different views, viewpoints, concerns and stakeholders can be considered. This is realised using a case viewpoint model derived from the ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 standard. The introduced approach was implemented as a demonstrator and evaluated using an application case that has been elicited from a business partner in the Swiss research project.This work was supported in part by the Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) of the Swiss Confederation under Grant 14575.1 PFES-ES and the ELO Digital Office CH AG.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/teis202018-04-30hb2017Information Scienc

A new paradigm for the continuous alignment of business and IT : combining enterprise architecture modelling and enterprise ontology

The paper deals with Next Generation Enterprise Information Systems in the context of Enterprise Engineering. The continuous alignment of business and IT in a rapidly changing environment is a grand challenge for today’s enterprises. The ability to react timeously to continuous and unexpected change is called agility and is an essential quality of the modern enterprise. Being agile has consequences for the engineering of enterprises and enterprise information systems. In this paper a new paradigm for next generation enterprise information systems is proposed, which shifts the development approach of model-driven engineering to continuous alignment of business and IT for the agile enterprise. It is based on a metamodelling approach, which supports both human-interpretable graphical enterprise architecture and machine-interpretable enterprise ontologies. Furthermore, next generation enterprise information systems are described, which embed modelling tools and algorithms for model analysis.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/compind2017-06-30hb201

Simvastatin add-on to escitalopram in patients with comorbid obesity and major depression (SIMCODE): study protocol of a multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial

Introduction: Major depressive disorder (MDD) and obesity are both common disorders associated with significant burden of disease worldwide. Importantly, MDD and obesity often co-occur, with each disorder increasing the risk for developing the other by about 50%-60%. Statins are among the most prescribed medications with well-established safety and efficacy. Statins are recommended in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease, which has been linked to both MDD and obesity. Moreover, statins are promising candidates to treat MDD because a meta-analysis of pilot randomised controlled trials has found antidepressive effects of statins as adjunct therapy to antidepressants. However, no study so far has tested the antidepressive potential of statins in patients with MDD and comorbid obesity. Importantly, this is a difficult-to-treat population that often exhibits a chronic course of MDD and is more likely to be treatment resistant. Thus, in this confirmatory randomised controlled trial, we will determine whether add-on simvastatin to standard antidepressant medication with escitalopram is more efficacious than add-on placebo over 12 weeks in 160 patients with MDD and comorbid obesity. Methods and analysis: This is a protocol for a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind multicentre trial with parallel-group design (phase II). One hundred and sixty patients with MDD and comorbid obesity will be randomised 1:1 to simvastatin or placebo as add-on to standard antidepressant medication with escitalopram. The primary outcome is change in the Montgomery-angstrom sberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) score from baseline to week 12. Secondary outcomes include MADRS response (defined as 50% MADRS score reduction from baseline), MADRS remission (defined as MADRS score <10), mean change in patients' self-reported Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and mean change in high-density lipoprotein, low-density lipoprotein and total cholesterol from baseline to week 12. Ethics and dissemination: This protocol has been approved by the ethics committee of the federal state of Berlin (Ethik-Kommission des Landes Berlin, reference: 19/0226-EK 11) and by the relevant federal authority (Bundesinstitut fur Arzneimittel und Medizinprodukte (BfArM), reference: 4043387). Study findings will be published in peer-reviewed journals and will be presented at (inter)national conferences

Schimke immunoosseous dysplasia: defining skeletal features

Schimke immunoosseous dysplasia (SIOD) is an autosomal recessive multisystem disorder characterized by prominent spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, T cell deficiency, and focal segmental glomerulosclerosis. Biallelic mutations in swi/snf-related, matrix-associated, actin-dependent regulator of chromatin, subfamily a-like 1 (SMARCAL1) are the only identified cause of SIOD, but approximately half of patients referred for molecular studies do not have detectable mutations in SMARCAL1. We hypothesized that skeletal features distinguish between those with or without SMARCAL1 mutations. Therefore, we analyzed the skeletal radiographs of 22 patients with and 11 without detectable SMARCAL1 mutations. We found that patients with SMARCAL1 mutations have a spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia (SED) essentially limited to the spine, pelvis, capital femoral epiphyses, and possibly the sella turcica, whereas the hands and other long bones are basically normal. Additionally, we found that several of the adolescent and young adult patients developed osteoporosis and coxarthrosis. Of the 11 patients without detectable SMARCAL1 mutations, seven had a SED indistinguishable from patients with SMARCAL1 mutations. We conclude therefore that SED is a feature of patients with SMARCAL1 mutations and that skeletal features do not distinguish who of those with SED have SMARCAL1 mutations

The role of content and context in enterprise repositories

In this paper we show how to utilize enterprise architectures to model relations between information sources of an enterprise. With our approach the enterprise architecture models are not passive entities anymore but can be operationalized to identify dependencies between the various models and to integrate information sources. It thus is the basis for agile enterprises. We show that the elements of an enterprise architecture and the referenced data can take the role of both context and content depending on the objectives of their use. We present two independent approaches for modeling an enterprise ontology

Chapter 19 Ontologies for E-government

Serious efforts have been made for years to bring e-government forward. Although according to an e-government study 2006 nearly 50 % of the examined services offered by EU states are fully available online (Capgemini, 2006) the majority of services on governmental web sites (especially of small municipalities) are in “stage 1” (information) or “stage 2 ” (interaction) 1. That is: providing online information about public services, e.g. opening hours or addresses of departments or provision of downloading of forms. Processing of forms, including authentication, (“stage 3 ”-two-way interaction) and mainly “stage 4 ” (transaction, that is full case handling, decision and delivery e.g. payment) is reached only for a few services. Taking into consideration that only 20 basic public services (12 for citizens, 8 for businesses) have been evaluated in the study (Chevallerau, 2005) – out of more than 1,000 (e.g. in Switzerland approximately 1,200 services have been identified (eCH0015, 2006)) – the necessity for new approaches is palpable. There are recent developments and trends on various levels that can have significant influence on the progress of e-government: – architecture: In a service-oriented architecture processes are supported by independent services that are made available on a network instead of having complex monolithic systems. They can be accessed via defined interfaces while implementation details are hidden to the user. This is particularly useful in administrative processes where various authorities are often involved. – technology: web services are a technology for implementing service-oriented architectures in an internet environment. They provide standards for identification K. Hinkelmann (B

Connecting Enterprise Architecture and Information Objects Using an Enterprise Ontology

Abstract—In this paper we show how semantic metadata – derived from the enterprise architecture description- can improve both the exploitation of information in the operative business and the continuous alignment of information systems with the business. ArchiMEO, a formal representation of the ArchiMate framework, was applied to model selected parts of a large Swiss company, including metadata of concrete information objects stored in various applications. The evaluation of our approach clearly gave evidence that linking an enterprise ontology with operational databases is beneficiary: it provides an integrated view and management of enterprise entities spread over various data stores, represented in different ways and levels of granularity. Furthermore, because of its inference capabilities, when used as metadata encoding scheme an enterprise ontology can provide context-sensitive access to relevant information

KISS – Knowledge-intensive Service Support for Agile Process Management

Abstract. Automating business processes especially in the tertiary sector is still a challenge as they are normally knowledge intensive, little automated but compliance relevant. To meet these requirements the paper at hand introduces the KISS approach: modeling knowledge intensive services by enriching business rules semantically and linking rules to processes