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. 2020 Jul 6;8(7):e17176.
doi: 10.2196/17176.

Data Integration in the Brazilian Public Health System for Tuberculosis: Use of the Semantic Web to Establish Interoperability

Felipe Carvalho Pellison  1 , Rui Pedro Charters Lopes Rijo  2   3   4   5 , Vinicius Costa Lima  1 , Nathalia Yukie Crepaldi  6 , Filipe Andrade Bernardi  1 , Rafael Mello Galliez  7 , Afrânio Kritski  7 , Kumar Abhishek  8 , Domingos Alves  5
Affiliations

Data Integration in the Brazilian Public Health System for Tuberculosis: Use of the Semantic Web to Establish Interoperability

Felipe Carvalho Pellison et al. JMIR Med Inform. .

Abstract

Background: Interoperability of health information systems is a challenge due to the heterogeneity of existing systems at both the technological and semantic levels of their data. The lack of existing data about interoperability disrupts intra-unit and inter-unit medical operations as well as creates challenges in conducting studies on existing data. The goal is to exchange data while providing the same meaning for data from different sources.

Objective: To find ways to solve this challenge, this research paper proposes an interoperability solution for the tuberculosis treatment and follow-up scenario in Brazil using Semantic Web technology supported by an ontology.

Methods: The entities of the ontology were allocated under the definitions of Basic Formal Ontology. Brazilian tuberculosis applications were tagged with entities from the resulting ontology.

Results: An interoperability layer was developed to retrieve data with the same meaning and in a structured way enabling semantic and functional interoperability.

Conclusions: Health professionals could use the data gathered from several data sources to enhance the effectiveness of their actions and decisions, as shown in a practical use case to integrate tuberculosis data in the State of São Paulo.

Keywords: electronic health records; health information systems; interoperability; ontology; semantic web; tuberculosis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The ontology for directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS) to support interoperability in the Brazilian public health system.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Object properties related to directly observed treatment, short-course (DOTS).
Figure 3
Figure 3
First part of the tuberculosis entities mapped into the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Second part of the tuberculosis entities mapped into the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Translated terms that allowed the interchange of data between the applications.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Information flow for tuberculosis treatment after implementation; adapted and improved from [37,38]. DOT: directly observed treatment; e-SUS: electronic Sistema Único de Saúde; FNI: Formulário de Notificação Individual; GAL: sistema Gerenciador de Ambiente Laboratorial; SINAN: Notification of Injury Information System; TBWEB: Notification and Monitoring System for Cases of Tuberculosis in the State of São Paulo.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Results of a SPARQL query simultaneously on SISTB and Notification and Monitoring System for Cases of Tuberculosis in the State of São Paulo (TBWEB) for a specific patient with sinan_id=10.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Architecture for interoperability between applications that use the Semantic Web and other standards (ie, HL7 FHIR and OpenEHR).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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