TY - GEN
T1 - An ontology for clinical trial data integration
AU - Sahay, Ratnesh
AU - Ntalaperas, Dimitrios
AU - Kamateri, Eleni
AU - Hasapis, Panagiotis
AU - Beyan, Oya Deniz
AU - Strippoli, Marie Pierre F.
AU - Demetriou, Christiana A.
AU - Gklarou-Stavropoulou, Thomai
AU - Brochhausen, Mathias
AU - Tarabanis, Konstantinos
AU - Bouras, Thanassis
AU - Tian, David
AU - Aristodimou, Aristos
AU - Antoniades, Athos
AU - Georgousopoulos, Christos
AU - Hauswirth, Manfred
AU - Decker, Stefan
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - A set of well-integrated clinical terminologies is at the core of delivering an efficient clinical trial system. The design and outcomes of a clinical trial can be improved significantly through an unambiguous and consistent set of clinical terminologies used in a participating clinical institute. However, due to lack of generalised legal and technical standards, heterogeneity exists between prominent clinical terminologies as well as within and between clinical systems at several levels, e.g., data, schema, and medical codes. This article specifically addresses the problem of integrating local or proprietary clinical terminologies with the globally defined universal concepts or terminologies. To deal with the problem of ambiguous, inconsistent, and overlapping clinical terminologies, domain and knowledge representation specialists have been repeatedly advocated the use of formal ontologies. We address two key challenges in developing an ontology-based clinical terminology (1) an ontology building methodology for clinical terminologies that are separated in global and local layers; and (2) aligning global and local clinical terminologies. We present Semantic Electronic Health Record (SEHR) ontology that covers multiple sub-domains of Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS) through specialisation of the upper-level Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). One of the main features of SEHR is layering and adaptation of local clinical terminologies with the upper-level BFO. Our empirical evaluation shows an agreement of clinical experts confirming SEHR's usability in clinical trials.
AB - A set of well-integrated clinical terminologies is at the core of delivering an efficient clinical trial system. The design and outcomes of a clinical trial can be improved significantly through an unambiguous and consistent set of clinical terminologies used in a participating clinical institute. However, due to lack of generalised legal and technical standards, heterogeneity exists between prominent clinical terminologies as well as within and between clinical systems at several levels, e.g., data, schema, and medical codes. This article specifically addresses the problem of integrating local or proprietary clinical terminologies with the globally defined universal concepts or terminologies. To deal with the problem of ambiguous, inconsistent, and overlapping clinical terminologies, domain and knowledge representation specialists have been repeatedly advocated the use of formal ontologies. We address two key challenges in developing an ontology-based clinical terminology (1) an ontology building methodology for clinical terminologies that are separated in global and local layers; and (2) aligning global and local clinical terminologies. We present Semantic Electronic Health Record (SEHR) ontology that covers multiple sub-domains of Healthcare and Life Sciences (HCLS) through specialisation of the upper-level Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). One of the main features of SEHR is layering and adaptation of local clinical terminologies with the upper-level BFO. Our empirical evaluation shows an agreement of clinical experts confirming SEHR's usability in clinical trials.
KW - Clinical terminology
KW - Clinical trial
KW - Ontology alignment
KW - Ontology building methodology
KW - Ontology evaluation
KW - Semantic interoperability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84893534236&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/SMC.2013.553
DO - 10.1109/SMC.2013.553
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84893534236
SN - 9780769551548
T3 - Proceedings - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2013
SP - 3244
EP - 3250
BT - Proceedings - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2013
T2 - 2013 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, SMC 2013
Y2 - 13 October 2013 through 16 October 2013
ER -