OntoSPM takes its origin in a project called “Synthesis and Simulation of Surgical Process Models” (S3PM), a project supported by the CominLabs Labex (Laboratoire d'Excellence). S3PM aims at supporting the training of surgical staff with Virtual Reality (VR) tools. A first originality of this project was the concern for designing various and realistic simulation scenarios, based on the recording of real procedures. A second originality was to the use of ontological models for representing domain knowledge and describing in a formal way the surgical processes.

The design of this ontology was organized in such a way to separate what was really specific of the S3PM application from what could be reused broadly in other contexts or applications related to surgery. This latter part was named OntoSPM (Ontology for representing Surical Process Models).

The initial version of OntoSPM was developed in the MediCIS group led by Pierre Jannin, and this initial version was then enriched in collaboration with Darko Katic from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (group led by Stefanie Speidel). The impetus for launching the OntoSPM Collaborative Action emerged from the discussions held during the First OntoSPM Workshop held in Rennes, France on April 28-29, 2016.

S3PM : https://project.inria.fr/s3pm/