Providing Semantic Interoperability for Integrated Healthcare Using a Model Transformation Approach

Integrated care and the achievement of high quality healthcare over institutional borders require technical and semantic interoperability between different healthcare providers. Thus, a meta model was developed, based on the application of a system conformant to Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and the use of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) as document format. This meta model combines the properties of several health information systems and different health service domains (HSD). For each HSD, a model can be derived, which describes used IHE profiles, available document types to the point of coding systems used in exchanged documents. Thus, it provides information about the domain, workflows, patient etc., which are used for the transformation into another domain. Using this model transformation, HSD models may be compared, checked and completed, where applicable. The results can then in turn be applied to the CDA documents. Thus, it helps to improve the communication among healthcare institutions. The evaluation of developed models and transformations is conducted using genuine healthcare data, provided by e-Care, an IHE-conformant system for exchange of healthcare data between several healthcare providers.