OntoCR: A CEN/ISO-13606 clinical repository based on ontologies

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Computer Science
• Medical Informatics

Background:

• Clinical data management faces challenges in semantic interoperability.
• Existing systems often lack flexibility and extensibility.
• Standardization is crucial for effective healthcare data exchange.

Purpose of the Study:

• To design a novel, semantically interoperable clinical repository.
• To ensure conformity with the CEN/ISO 13606 standard.
• To leverage ontologies for flexible clinical data management.

Main Methods:

• Extended the OntoCRF framework for ontology-based clinical repositories.
• Integrated an OWL model incorporating CEN/ISO 13606, ISO 21090, and SNOMED CT.
• Developed a meta-model and a test application for evaluation.

Main Results:

• Demonstrated a complete evaluation cycle for the developed system.
• Created a meta-model in OWL format.
• Successfully communicated standardized extracts to another organization, proving semantic interoperability.

Conclusions:

• A native CEN/ISO 13606 compliant clinical data repository is feasible.
• Ontology-based approach ensures data storage independence from content specification.
• Relational technology can be utilized for storage while maintaining extensibility.