Letter to the Editor: FHIR RDF - Why the world needs structured electronic health records

Houcemeddine Turki; Lane Rasberry; Mohamed Ali Hadj Taieb; Daniel Mietchen; Mohamed Ben Aouicha; Anastassios Pouris; Yamen Bousrih

doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2022.104253

Letter to the Editor: FHIR RDF - Why the world needs structured electronic health records

J Biomed Inform. 2022 Dec:136:104253. doi: 10.1016/j.jbi.2022.104253. Epub 2022 Nov 20.

Authors

Houcemeddine Turki¹, Lane Rasberry², Mohamed Ali Hadj Taieb³, Daniel Mietchen⁴, Mohamed Ben Aouicha⁵, Anastassios Pouris⁶, Yamen Bousrih⁷

Affiliations

¹ Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit, Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia. Electronic address: turkiabdelwaheb@hotmail.fr.
² School of Data Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States. Electronic address: rasberry@virginia.edu.
³ Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit, Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia. Electronic address: mohamedali.hadjtaieb@fss.usf.tn.
⁴ Ronin Institute for Independent Scholarship, Montclair, NJ, United States. Electronic address: daniel.mietchen@ronininstitute.org.
⁵ Data Engineering and Semantics Research Unit, Faculty of Sciences of Sfax, University of Sfax, Sfax, Tunisia. Electronic address: mohamed.benaouicha@fss.usf.tn.
⁶ Institute for Technological Innovation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa. Electronic address: anastassios.pouris@up.ac.za.
⁷ VERMEG France, Paris, France. Electronic address: yamenbousrih@gmail.com.

PMID: 36417986
DOI: 10.1016/j.jbi.2022.104253

Abstract

This comment discusses the benefits of representing and reusing the information in Electronic Health Record databases as knowledge graphs in the RDF format based on the FHIR RDF specification. As a structured representation of clinical data, FHIR RDF-based electronic health records allow a simpler and more effective integration of biomedical information using semantic alignment, queries, interoperability, and federation to provide better support for health practice and research.

Keywords: Clinical Data Integration; Data reuse; Electronic Health Records; FHIR RDF; Semantic EHR; Structured EHR.

Publication types

Letter
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Databases, Factual
Electronic Health Records*
Knowledge
Semantics*