4. The method of claim 1 wherein learning as a function of the one or more semantic groupings comprises constraining a contribution of the features to a distance with the one or more semantic groupings.
1. A method for use of a medical ontology for computer assisted clinical decision support, the method comprising: providing a medical ontology indicating one or more semantic groupings of features; learning, by a processor, to identify at least one similar patient record from a set of patient records, the learning being a function of the one or more semantic groupings of features of the medical ontology; and outputting information derived from the learning.