In this Issue HL7 News

HL7 News • A Fully Functional HL7 FHIR Based Ontology for Telehealth Data Management and Exchange
Using FHIR to Address Telehealth Challenges
A Fully Functional HL7 FHIR Based Ontology
for Telehealth Data Management and Exchange
We have developed an HL7 FHIR based ontology to support
clinical and telehealth data storage and exchange in a
scalable and low maintenance cost manner.
Integrated Care Data Challenges
Integrated care links multiple levels
of care management together and
provides coordinated services,
including telemedicine. In order for
care to be integrated, professionals
across the continuum of care from
different organizations and health
systems must collaborate on the
prevention and
management of
chronic disease
and co-morbidity
for their patients.
In this context, multiple challenges
arise with regards to data management,
due to the disparity of the types of data
that need to be managed, including
clinical record data, bio-signals,
derived features, subjective reports
and provenance information. The
solutions must be designed for
multiple data and information sources
as well as multiple access points.
Additionally, they must provide the
flexibility to meet the needs not only
of standard EHR systems but also
of PHRs and telehealth systems.
Data Management Scaffolding
Framework: The Role of Ontology
We envision a framework applicable
to integrated care data management
which minimizes maintenance points,
adheres to current state of the art
standards, provides single point
of extension and relies on Linked
Data principles. This translates to
a reusable, cost effective, scalable
and sustainable solution, with the
ability to reuse the stored information
for a learning health system.
Core components of our framework
are the underlying ontology that not
only describes the domain entities but
also acts as a roadmap for restful web
service communication API and the
persistent storage server that holds
not only the actual data but also the
current version of the ontology.
By Vasilis Kilintzis,
PhD, Postdoctoral
Researcher,
Laboratory of
Computing and
Informatics
Group, Aristotle
University of
Thessaloniki,
Greece;
Ioanna
Chouvarda,
PhD, Assistant
Professor,
Laboratory of
Computing and
Informatics
Group, Aristotle
University of
Thessaloniki,
Greece
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