Ontologies in eHealth Pirkko Nykänen, University of Tampere

1. Ontologies in eHealth
Pirkko Nykänen
Professor, Health Informatics
University of Tampere, Department of Computer Sciences
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 1
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

2. Contents
•What is an ontology
•eHealth
•How ontologies are related to eHealth
•How ontologies can be utilised in eHealth
•How to manage ontologies
•What we will do with ontologies
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 2
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

3. What is an ontology?
•Philosophy: An ontology refers to a particular
system of categories accounting for a certain
vision of the world
–this system does not depend on a particular language
•Artificial intelligence: An ontology refers to an
engineering artifact, constituted by a specific
vocabulary used to describe a certain reality
–plus a set of explicit assumptions regarding the
intended meaning of the vocabulary words
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 3
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

4. • An ontology: A logical theory accounting for the
intended meaning of a formal vocabulary
– ontological commitment to a particular
conceptualisation of the world (Guarino, 1998)
• An ontology: An explicit specification of a
conceptualisation (Gruber, 1993)
• An ontology: Partial conceptualisation of a domain in
terms of domain objects, their properties and
relations (Benaroch, 2005)
• An ontology: Study of categories of things that exist
or may exist in some domain. The product of such
study, an ontology, is a catalog of the types of things
that are assumed to exist in a domain of interest D
from the perspective of a person who uses language L
to talk about domain D (Sowa, 1997)
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 4
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

5. Healthcare is information-intensive
• Healthcare is rich on data, information and knowledge
• Healthcare data is captured during clinical work and
research processes but used by other processes
• Clinical care of patients is shared among multiple
provider enterprises (e.g. by mobile citizens) requiring
information sharing
• Information needs to be aggregated per-patient to
allow personalised healthcare & decision support and
then across populations for public health analysis and
medical research
• Healthcare information is multitype, complex and
changing and therefore challenging to manage over
time
• High requirements for validity, privacy, safety and
security Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 5
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

6. eHealth
• eHealth - use of ICT to improve or enable
health and healthcare
–Services are offered to be used through
the Internet, citizens have interaction with
health professionals who look after their
health needs
• eHealth - not only technologies, but
reengineering of health care processes, and
consideration of the socio-technical aspects of
design and development of ehealth systems
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 6
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

7. eHealth systems
• One of the key problems in eHealth, health informatics is the
lack of interoperability among different eHealth systems
• Interoperability can be investigated in different categories in
the eHealth domain
– such as the interoperability of the messages exchanged between
healthcare applications, interoperability of Electronic Healthcare
Records (EHRs), interoperability of patient identifiers, coding
systems, clinical guidelines and healthcare business processes
• All these categories can be investigated in two major layers:
–Syntactic interoperability layer involves the ability of two
or more systems to exchange information
–Semantic interoperability layer refers to the ability for
information shared by systems to be understood at the
level of formally defined domain concepts
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 7
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

8. How ontologies are related to
eHealth?
• Clinical research and practice –understand, treat, prevent
human diseases
• Data, information, knowledge must be extracted, collected,
developed, processed and applied in these activities
– Many different types at different epistemic and cognitive levels
– Representations of these data, information and knowledge are
based on observations, examinations, care records and other kinds
of recorded empirical data
• A shared understanding is needed on these data, information and
knowledge
– Specific language/ vocabularies used by health professionals to
communicate medical knowledge and patient-specific information
• Unambiguous communication of complex and detailed
concepts, leaving the user free to make explicit his/her own
conceptualisation
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 8
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

9. Using information
• Is about querying…
– Across institutional and geographical boundaries
– Longitudinally in patient record
– Simultaneously in many and varying data and
information sources for one patient
–Across cohorts of patients or studies
• Meaning must formally relate to the semantic
definition of the information
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 9
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

10. How ontologies can be
utilised in eHealth?
•Ontology-driven information systems
–Data and information modelling, conceptual modelling
–Knowledge-integration methodologies to support
sharing of knowledge, data and information
–Ontology mapping on IS enterprise architecture levels
and components
•Semantic interoperability
–Distributed, inter-organisational information systems
–Agreed conceptualisations, domain ontologies
–Shared understanding, interpretation of concepts
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 10
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

11. How to manage ontologies?
• Ontology modelling
–An ontology editor that provides a graphical
representation of the ontology and allows visual
evaluation of the ontology
• Ontology formalisation
–Ontology description languages like OWL Web Ontology
Language
•Reference / top ontologies / context ontologies
– partially accessible in eHealth domain
•Showcase ontologies
–Actor-profile ontologies
–Citizen-case profile ontologies / personal health ontologies
• Services / Intervention / Activity plans
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 11
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

12. What we will do with
ontologies?
–Develop a context-sensitive welfare conceptual model
and ontology
• citizen-centred approach for personal health
A
• enable life-long management and utilisation of
To
welfare and health related information and knowledge
in an ubiquitous welfare environment
–Develop an information system architecture for a life-long
health and welfare record
•Data and information interoperability
•Enterprise architecture approach
•Ontology-driven IS
Evaluation: Impacts analysis based on use cases and
usage scenarios
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 12
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment

13. This research is ongoing!
Pirkko.Nykanen@uta.fi
Pirkko Nykänen 3.2.2010 13
Trusted eHealth and eWelfare Space in Ubiquitous Health Environment