Health Economics Ontology (HEO)

Ontology URI (permanent identifier): https://healtheconomics.wiki/ontology/heo
Current version: 0.1.5 (alpha), version URI https://healtheconomics.wiki/ontology/heo/0.1.5
Creators: Dr Darrin Baines and Michelle Ashley
Publisher: Intelligent Parameters Ltd
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Registry: BioPortal, acronym HEO

Description

The Health Economics Ontology (HEO) is a formal vocabulary of health economics concepts, with a definition for each concept and typed relationships between them. It is derived from HealthEconomics.wiki. Each concept is identified by a stable URI that serves as its permanent identifier.

Version 0.1.5 contains 4,458 concept classes and about 14,200 typed relationships. The concept hierarchy is expressed with rdfs:subClassOf. The other relationships (part of, uses, measures, informs, depends on, contrasts with and others) are annotation properties drawn from a fixed set of 15 relationship types.

Maintenance

HEO is maintained as a living resource. Each release is regenerated from the current state of HealthEconomics.wiki, validated against SHACL shapes before publication, and issued with its own version URI. Earlier versions remain available, so an analysis can cite the exact version it used.

Editorial process

HEO is AI-assisted and human-curated. Every concept, definition and relationship is reviewed and approved by an editor before release, and definitions are checked against their cited sources.

How to cite

Baines D, Ashley M. (2026). Health Economics Ontology (HEO), version 0.1.5. Intelligent Parameters Ltd. https://healtheconomics.wiki/ontology/heo