A Semantic-Web Oriented Representation of Clinical Element Model for Secondary Use of Electronic Healthcare Data

Abstract

Healthcare system interoperability is one of the most important goals for Meaningful Use of the Electronic Health Records (EHR). It is essential to facilitate IT support for workflow management, decision support systems, and evidence-based healthcare, as well as secondary use of EHR across healthcare organizations. The Clinical Element Model (CEM) was designed to provide a consistent architecture for representing clinical information in EHR systems. The CEM has been adopted in the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Project, secondary use of EHR (SHARPn) as the common unified information model for unambiguous data representation, interpretation, and exchange within and across heterogeneous sources and applications.