© 2014 GB Group Limited RDF as a Universal Healthcare Exchange Language March, 2015 Angell Wang
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 2 Agenda 1.About me 2.Mission and Strategy of Healthcare Info Exchange 3.Introduce RDF 4.How to achieve semantic interoperability by RDF
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 3 MISSION: Semantic interoperability of all structured healthcare information
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 4 Semantic interoperability: The ability of computer systems to exchange data with unambiguous, shared meaning. – Wikipedia
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 5 Strategy: RDF as a universal information representation
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 6 Imagine a world in which all healthcare systems speak the same language with the same meanings covering all healthcare.
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 7
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 8 What is RDF? 1. RDF stands for Resource Description Framework Resource: pages, dogs, ideas...everything that can have a URI Description: attributes, features, and relations of the resources Framework: 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
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 9 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.
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 10 Tabular Data Patient_IDBP_obervationBP_valueBP_unit patient319obs_ mmHg
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 11 Key benefits of RDF RDF is self describing and capture information. Multiple data models and vocabularies can be easily combined and interrelated
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 12 Key benefits of RDF RDF is easy to map from other data representation.
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 13 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.
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 14 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 and vocabularies
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 15 However Standardization takes time Standards trilemma: Timely: Completed quickly Good: High quality Comprehensive: Handles all use cases
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 16 However Modernization takes time 1.Existing systems cannot be updated all at once 2.The new standard co-exists with the old
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 17 However Diverse use cases Different use cases need different data, granularity and representations. One standard does not fit all!
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 18 However Standards evolve, Version n+1 improves on version n
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 19 Translation is unavoidable!
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 20 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
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 21 Reference list : 1.David Booth 2.David Booth
© 2014 GB Group Limited. P. 22 Thanks !