A reusable ontology for primitive and complex HL7 FHIR data types

Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2015:2015:2547-50. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2015.7318911.

Abstract

HL7(®) FHIR(®) standard is a new standard aiming to offer more flexible interoperability mechanisms. We present a stand-alone RDF vocabulary as an OWL ontology that defines the primitive and complex data types of the FHIR framework, alongside their validation rules. We address the non-trivial questions of representing FHIR data types as RDF/OWL constructs in a coherent and complete manner. The proposed ontology can be used as a basic framework, where the complexity of a FHIR-based EHR is not required, while still maintaining semantic cohesion with an industry-based standard. It can also be the base for a complete representation of FHIR model as an ontology.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Biological Ontologies*
  • Databases, Factual*
  • Electronic Health Records / standards*
  • Humans
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Semantics