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RDF as a Universal Healthcare Exchange Language

March, 2015 Angell Wang

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Agenda

1. About me

2. Mission and Strategy of Healthcare Info Exchange

3. Introduce RDF

4. How to achieve semantic interoperability by RDF

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MISSION:

Semantic interoperability of all

structured healthcare information

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Semantic interoperability: The ability of computer systems

to exchange datawith unambiguous, shared meaning.

– Wikipedia

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Strategy:

RDF as auniversal information representation

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Imagine a worldin which all healthcare systemsspeak the same languagewith the same meaningscovering all healthcare.

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What is RDF?

1. RDF stands for Resource Description FrameworkResource: pages, dogs, ideas...everything that can have a URIDescription: attributes, features, and relations of the resourcesFramework: model, languages and syntaxes for these descriptions

2. RDF is designed to be read and understood by computers

3. RDF is a part of the W3C's Semantic Web STANDARD STACK

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RDF is a triple model. Every piece of knowledge is broken down into ( subject, predicate ,object )

English assertion: Patient319 has name "John Doe".Patient319 has systolic blood pressure observation Obs_001.Obs_001 value was 120.Obs_001 units was mmHg.

RDF assertion: ( subject, predicate ,object ) patient319, name , "John Doe" . patient319, systolicBP , obs_001 . obs_001 , value , 120 . obs_001, units , mmHg .

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Tabular Data

Patient_ID BP_obervation BP_value BP_unit

patient319 obs_001 120 mmHg

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Key benefits of RDF

• RDF is self describing and capture information .

• Multiple data models and vocabularies can be easilycombined and interrelated

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Key benefits of RDF

• RDF is easy to map from other data representation.

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Key benefits of RDF

• RDF enables inference.

• If we know:?x a v:Mitral Valve .v:Mitral Valve rdfs:subClassOf v:Heart Valve .• Then we can infer:?x a v:Heart Valve .

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How to achieve semantic interoperability by RDF

• Standards:– Make everyone speak the same language– I.e., same data models and vocabularies

• Translations:– Translate between languages– I.e., translate between data models andvocabularies

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However

• Standardization takes time

Standards trilemma:

• Timely: Completed quickly• Good: High quality• Comprehensive: Handles all use cases

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However

• Modernization takes time

1. Existing systems cannot be updated all at once2. The new standard co-exists with the old

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However

• Diverse use cases Different use cases need different data, granularity and representations. One standard does not fit all!

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However

• Standards evolve, Version n+1 improves on version n

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Translation is unavoidable!

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Translation

• How to exchange info in different system?

Translation is unavoidable!

1. Translate Source/Target to RDF

2. Translate instance data between RDF data models

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Reference list :

1. David Booth http://dbooth.org/2014/yosemite/

2. David Booth http://dbooth.org/2014/rdf-as-univ/

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Thanks !