Towards Precise Descriptions of Medical Free/Libre and Open Source Software

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2020 Jun 16:270:463-468. doi: 10.3233/SHTI200203.

Abstract

The web portal Medfloss.org lists over 360 medical free/libre and open source software (MEDFLOSS) projects. These projects are described with the help of a self-developed nomenclature. Due to inconsistencies, the nomenclature shall be replaced by HITO, the Health IT Ontology. HITO is developed iteratively based on different use cases. This paper aims to describe methods and results of the second HITO use case in which HITO is extended to improve the description, retrieval and comparisons of MEDFLOSS projects on Medfloss.org. We use a mixed-methods approach to add concepts and relationships to describe MEDFLOSS precisely. The resulting HITO version stresses functional descriptions based on features and supported enterprise functions, rather than just describing technical characteristics. However, describing a larger number of MEDFLOSS projects requires the commitment of the community.

Keywords: Health Information Systems; Semantics; Software.

MeSH terms

  • Semantics
  • Software*