The paper reviews problems associated with the functioning of a hierarchical ontology of concepts concerning the quality of a healthcare IT specialist’s work. It examines methods for evaluating ontology development software, selecting relevant terms, determining the types of relationships between terms, defining options and content for ontology vertices and edges, and establishing cognitive routes. It also considers how to address the work quality problem described by the ontology. Existing analogues are presented, with the best incorporated into a composite prototype. Hypotheses for its improvement are proposed.