Title: The role of medicinal ontologies in querying and exchanging pharmaceutical information

Authors: Juha Puustjarvi, Leena Puustjarvi

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O.Box 9210 FIN 02015 TKK Finland. ' The Pharmacy of Kaivopuisto, Neitsytpolku 10 Helsinki 14, Finland

Abstract: The technology developed for interoperable autonomous systems has significantly changed during the past few years. In particular, XML is rapidly becoming the key standard for data representation and transportation. However, the introduction of XML is not enough but many other XML-based technologies have to be deployed in order to achieve a seamless interoperability between the organisations of the healthcare sector. In this article we have restricted ourselves on electronic prescription systems and on the chances that Semantic Web technologies can provide. In particular, we report our work on medicinal ontologies and how they can be exploited (i) in providing querying facilities on electronic prescriptions and (ii) in achieving semantic interoperability between medicinal information systems. Especially, we introduced our adopted RDF-based messaging and show its gains over XML-based messaging.

Keywords: electronic healthcare; electronic prescriptions; medicinal ontologies; e-healthcare; e-prescriptions; pharmaceutical information; information exchange; information search; interoperability; semantic web; RDF.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEH.2009.026269

International Journal of Electronic Healthcare, 2009 Vol.5 No.1, pp.1 - 13

Published online: 05 Jun 2009 *

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