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IADIS International Conference WWW/Internet 2010As the dual model approach of the ISO 13606 EHR Communication Standard has its origin in structuringinformation using domain ontologies (Beale 2000), Archetypes can be seen as descriptions of informationitems, which concepts are very similar to ontologies except that ontologies tend to describe real world things(OpenEHR 2008). Implementing the ODAM for ISO 13606, the ontology model is given by the ISO 13606Reference Model and the ontology instances are provided through the ISO 13606 Archetypes, an applicationcould easily adapt to new Archetypes without reprogramming IT infrastructure and back-end systems.Through an appropriate application model, EHR information could be exchanged and integrated with legacydatabase systems without losing information during transformation from Archetype-based EHR to data baseschemata and without compromising the benefits of Archetype-based EHR exchange.However several factors played a significant role for choosing OWL to implement ISO13606:• The power of OWL allowed us to uniform the dual model approach into a comprehensive andconsistent model, the EHR ontology model. Implementing the ISO 13606 dual model as one comprehensiveontology model created a far more abstract view onto the two models of 13606. As described above the EHRontology as ontology model (in the ODAM) unifies different system- and programming language- dependentimplementations.• The OWL representation facilitated implementing the generic concept of ISO 13606.• The OWL representation facilitated a fast application development, through API and tool support, likeProtégé (Stanford-University 2010).• The ISO 13606 standard specifies the information model only, which means that the standard is notspecific about the exchanging media. OWL is a means to structure the data according to the 13606 standard.Due to the ODAM, data retrieval can be performed based on the Reference Model. This enables queryingthe entire EHR data repository and drilling down onto archetype information later if necessary.Exchanging of EHR extracts, compatible to non ontology driven applications, happens through webservices. These web services provide the ISO13606 model through WSDL and exchange the informationthrough SOAP messages. Ontology driven applications can access the ontologies directly, dependent onsecurity policies.5. PERSPECTIVESTo formally express a process as ontology, the process building blocks are for example actions, control flows,decision nodes et al. The individuals of this ontology describe how to arrange these building blocks to definea concrete domain process. Both together result in an integrative-domain-process.The process model is derived from OWL-S Process.owl ontology. OWL-S is an ontology for semanticallydescribing web services. “OWL-S is an OWL-based Web service ontology, which supplies Web serviceproviders with a core set of constructs for describing the properties and capabilities of their Web services inunambiguous, computer-interpretable form”(DAML 2010). The aim of OWL-S is an ontology for webservices with a set of standardized classes and properties that enable a service provider to create machineinterpretable descriptions, and to enable a service requester to automatically find, invoke and composite theright services. This is basically done by providing a process description that defines the conditions (e.g.input- output parameter) for changing services’ state (Martin, Burstein et al. 2008). As OWL-S comprises ofdifferent parts, one part is used for defining processes, the Process.owl ontology.Implementing the ODAM for the clinical process model enables applications to communicate individualsand assembling them to an integrative process. Thus, several new processes for different contents could beeasily implemented without reprogramming the IT infrastructure. Furthermore interchanging individualsallows transmitting information about the state during a process. This means in a real world scenario forexample information about how the patient has been already treated and how he has to be further treated. Ifyou imagine a scenario where several attending physicians have to work together and exchange informationconcerning one patient, process information could be a major benefit.This approach facilitates the definition of EBM treatment or decision supporting processes for aninteractive IT support for HCPs.Combining the process model with ISO 13606 in an Ontology Driven Application approach, enablesdecision support using all aforementioned benefits. The process builds the knowledge base for guidance anddecision support, the Archetypes and EHR-extracts (patient information) trigger the workflow.337