Using knowledge graph structures for semantic interoperability in electronic health records data exchanges
The interoperability of health care systems—especially electronic health records (EHRs)—has long been a focus of regulators, medical personnel, and other key stakeholders. Interoperability helps ensure data communicated from one system to another are sufficient for the receiving system to work with, i.e., have the same meaning to the recipient as they do the sender. This is not always an easy task, as noted by Sachdeva and Bhalla in this 2022 paper published in Information. Also noting the value in clinical information exchange, the authors examine formal methods of making interoperability work better, as well as considerations interoperability experts should be making in successfully transforming data across different EHR standards. After laying out their research work and findings on cross-conversion of archetypes such as XML, ADL, and OWL, the authors conclude both that “terminology binding must established through archetypes” and “mappings between different standardized EHR systems must be established.” Each archetype has its drawbacks and benefits, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, and this research “can contribute to helping EHR system vendors and developers to choose the appropriate technology for the required purpose, keeping in mind semantic interoperability.”
