Medical informatics and digital health multilingual ontology (MIMO): A tool to improve international collaborations

Arriel Benis; Julien Grosjean; Kévin Billey; Gustavo Montanha; Verena Dornauer; Mihaela Crișan-Vida; Werner O Hackl; Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar; Stéfan J Darmoni

doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104860

Medical informatics and digital health multilingual ontology (MIMO): A tool to improve international collaborations

Int J Med Inform. 2022 Nov:167:104860. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104860. Epub 2022 Aug 29.

Authors

Arriel Benis¹, Julien Grosjean², Kévin Billey³, Gustavo Montanha⁴, Verena Dornauer⁵, Mihaela Crișan-Vida⁶, Werner O Hackl⁵, Lăcrămioara Stoicu-Tivadar⁶, Stéfan J Darmoni⁷

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Technology Management, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel; Faculty of Digital Technologies in Medicine, Holon Institute of Technology, Israel; European Federation for Medical Informatics, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland. Electronic address: arrielb@hit.ac.il.
² Department of Biomedical Informatics, Rouen University Hospital, France; LIMICS Laboratory of Medical Informatics and Knowledge Engineering in e-Health, INSERM U1142, Sorbonne Université, France.
³ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Rouen University Hospital, France.
⁴ Centro Hospitalar de Entre o Douro e Vouga EPE: Santa Maria da Feira, Aveiro, Portugal.
⁵ Institute of Medical Informatics, Private University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology, Hall in Tirol, Austria.
⁶ Department of Automation and Applied Informatics, University Politehnica Timișoara, Timișoara, Romania; European Federation for Medical Informatics, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland.
⁷ Department of Biomedical Informatics, Rouen University Hospital, France; LIMICS Laboratory of Medical Informatics and Knowledge Engineering in e-Health, INSERM U1142, Sorbonne Université, France; European Federation for Medical Informatics, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Switzerland.

Abstract

Background: Even if English is the leading language for international communication, it is essential to keep in mind that research runs at the local level by local teams generally communicating in their local/national language, especially in Europe among European projects.

Objective: Therefore, the European Federation for Medical Informatics - Working Group on Health Informatics for Inter-regional Cooperation" has one objective: To develop a multilingual ontology focusing on Health Informatics and Digital Health as a collaboration tool that improves international and, in particular, European collaborations.

Results: We have developed the Medical Informatics and Digital Health Multilingual Ontology (MIMO). Hosted on the Health Terminology/Ontology Portal (HeTOP), MIMO contains around 1,000 concepts, 460 MeSH Descriptors, 220 MeSH Concepts, and more than 300 newly created concepts. MIMO is continuously updated to comprise as recent as possible concepts and their translations in more than 30 languages. Moreover, the MIMO's development team constantly improves MIMO content and supporting information. Thus, during workshop discussions and one-on-one exchanges, the MIMO team has collected domain experts' opinions about the community's interests and suggestions for future enhancements. Moreover, MIMO will be integrated to support the annotation and categorization of research products into the HosmartAI European project involving more than 20 countries around Europe and worldwide.

Conclusion: MIMO is hosted by HeTOP (Health Terminology/Ontology Portal), which integrates 100 terminologies and ontologies in 55 languages. MIMO is freely available online. MIMO is portable to other knowledge platforms as part of MIMO's main aims to facilitate communication between medical librarians, translators, and researchers as well as to support students' self-learning.

Keywords: Biomedical Ontologies; Communication; Digital Health; Information Services; Intersectoral Collaboration; Language; Translations; Vocabulary, Controlled.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Europe
Humans
Language
Medical Informatics*
Multilingualism*