A Formal Investigation of Semantic Interoperability of HCLS Systems

Abstract

Semantic interoperability facilitates Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLS) systems in connecting stakeholders (e.g., patient, physician, pharmacy) at various levels as well as ensure seamless use of healthcare resources (e.g., data, schema, applications). Their scope ranges from local (within, e.g., hospitals or hospital networks) to regional, national and cross-border. The use of semantics in delivering interoperable solution for HCLS systems is weakened by fact that an Ontology Based Information System (OBIS) has restrictions in modeling, aggregating, and interpreting global knowledge (e.g., terminologies for disease, drug, clinical event) in conjunction with local information (e.g., policy, profiles). This chapter presents an example-scenario that shows such limitations and recognizes that enabling two key features, namely the type and scope of knowledge, within a knowledge base could enhance the overall e ectiveness of an OBIS. We provide the idea of separating knowledge bases in types (e.g., general or constraint knowledge) with scope (e.g.,global or local) of applicability. Then, we propose two concrete solutions on this general notion. Finally, we describe open research issues that may be of interest to knowledge system developers and broader research community.