Research Article
Health Data Semantics: Exploring Requirements for Sustainable Health Systems
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_24, author={Mate Bestek and Erik Gr\o{}nvall}, title={Health Data Semantics: Exploring Requirements for Sustainable Health Systems}, proceedings={Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare. 16th EAI International Conference, PervasiveHealth 2022, Thessaloniki, Greece, December 12-14, 2022, Proceedings}, proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH}, year={2023}, month={6}, keywords={Health Data Semantics Semantic interoperability Democratisation Co-Design Human-Data Interaction}, doi={10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_24} }- Mate Bestek
Erik Grönvall
Year: 2023
Health Data Semantics: Exploring Requirements for Sustainable Health Systems
PERVASIVEHEALTH
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_24
Abstract
Health data cannot easily move from one healthcare provider to another, let alone between different countries. There is a de facto lack of health data interoperability in many healthcare systems preventing mobility and sharing of health data. Hitherto the literature has mainly considered technical aspects and challenges related to interoperability, but this paper will foremost explore semantic aspects. Using two cases of exploring data interoperability and the democratisation of health data as a backdrop, this paper presents existing challenges preventing sustainable health systems by focusing on semantic aspects of data interoperability in healthcare. A key finding is that data interoperability is possible and standardised data semantics are key resources to support data access within or across systems, for example between countries. The democratisation of health data, allowing different health systems to interact with each other, requires management of the shared semantic resources and the governance structures defining them. Domain experts, like medical doctors, can play an important role in co-designing and managing such shared, semantic resources.
