An Ontology for a Patient-Centric Healthcare Interoperability Framework

Abstract

Healthcare clients are increasingly interested to be involved and informed of their healthcare delivery and status [1] [2]. They need to be able to access, view, and analyze their health data easily and securely. Clients need one single gateway to their medical records. Some healthcare providers are creating portals for their clients to flow some data for them to view [3]. In addition, clients can request a portion of their health data in paper format from their healthcare providers by filling in forms and manually submitting their requests. But, this is not sufficient for the average healthcare client. There is a need for a platform independent tool that can automatically gather and combine a client’s health information from the various providers in their circle of care and provide the information securely and electronically without inconveniencing the client with multiple requests and sharing agreements [4]. Healthcare providers can also benefit from such a tool in the sense of gaining insights from their colleagues’ efforts automatically and without starting a separate quest for each piece of information. In this paper we propose framework and toolset that can provide a secure single point of access to a client’s full picture of their personal health information. In particular, we delve into one of the key components of our framework which is our proposed ontology.