Temporal Cohort Logic

Abstract

We introduce a new logic, called Temporal Cohort Logic (TCL), for cohort specification and discovery in clinical and population health research. TCL is created to fill a conceptual gap in formalizing temporal reasoning in biomedicine, in a similar role that temporal logics play for computer science and its applications. We provide formal syntax and semantics for TCL and illustrate the various logical constructs using examples related to human health. Relationships and distinctions with existing temporal logical frameworks are discussed. Applications in electronic health record (EHR) and in neurophysiological data resource are provided. Our approach differs from existing temporal logics, in that we explicitly capture Allen's interval algebra as modal operators in a language of temporal logic (rather than addressing it in the semantic structure). This has two major implications. First, it provides a formal logical framework for reasoning about time in biomedicine, allowing general (i.e., higher-levels of abstraction) investigation into the properties of this approach (such as proof systems, completeness, expressiveness, and decidability) independent of a specific query language or a database system. Second, it puts our approach in the context of logical developments in computer science, allowing potential translation of existing results into the setting of TCL and its variants or subsystems so as to illuminate opportunities and computational challenges involved in temporal reasoning for biomedicine.