FHIR Based ContSys Ontology to Enable Continuity of Care Data Interoperability

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Nov 3:299:139-144. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220972.

Abstract

In the midst of a global pandemic, perspectives on how digital can enhance healthcare service delivery and workflow to address the global crisis is underway. Action plans collating existing digital transformation programs are being scrutinized to set in place core infrastructure and foundations for sustainable healthcare solutions. Reforming health and social care to personalize the home care setting can for example assist in avoiding treatment in a crowed acute hospital setting and improve the experience and impact on both health care professionals and service users alike. In this information intensive domain addressing the interoperability challenge through standards based roadmaps is the lynchpin to enable health and social care services to connect effectively. Thus facilitating safe and trustworthy data workflow from one healthcare systems provider to another. In this paper we showcase a methodology on how we can extract, transform and load data in a semi-automated process using a Common Semantic Standardized Data Model (CSSDM) to generate personalized healthcare knowledge graph (KG). CSSDM is based on formal ontology of ISO 13940:2015 ContSys for conceptual grounding and FHIR based specification to accommodate structural attributes to generate KG. CSSDM we suggest enables data harmonization and data linking. The goal of CSSDM is to offer an alternative pathway to speak about interoperability by supporting a different kind of collaboration between a company creating a health information system and a cloud enabled health service. This pathway of communication provides access to multiple stakeholders for sharing high quality data and information.

Keywords: EHR; FHIR; Healthcare System; Interoperability; Ontology.

MeSH terms

  • Continuity of Patient Care
  • Delivery of Health Care
  • Electronic Health Records*
  • Home Care Services*
  • Humans
  • Semantics