Healthcare Informatics Landscapes, Roadmaps, and Blueprints: Towards a Business Case Strategy for La

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Healthcare Informatics Landscapes, Roadmaps, and
Blueprints Towards a Business Case Strategy for
Large Scale Ontology ProjectsPanel Discussion

• Brand Niemann (US EPA), Chair,
• Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice
  (SICoP)
• Best Practices Committee (BPC), CIO Council
• August 25, 2005
• http//web-services.gov/ and
• http//colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SICoP

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Talking Points

• Thank you for the invitation to participate and I
  have appreciated the organization of this panel
  by Rex Brooks and the presentations of those that
  have proceeded me.
• I feel that the Ontolog/SICoP partnership has
  been advancing the business case in this topic
  area for over a year now and we are poised for a
  breakthrough.
• Our meeting with ONCHIT, July 25th was a
  significant milestone and we are on the high
  ground leading the way forward in a way they
  will come to more fully appreciate.
• My first suggestion is to lead with
  interoperability (not integration) as the problem
  we are trying to solve and large scale ontology
  does that in an agile, adaptive, data-driven way.

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Talking Points(continued)

• My second point is that standards generally fail
  in their implementation and so our fostering of
  pilots and early implementors is critical, so
  please continue to send us your suggestions for
  our workshop and conference agendas.
• As ZapThink (considered to be the Gartner of SOA)
  says We need to move beyond explaining what SOA
  is and show how to do it. (I think the same
  principle applies to large scale ontologies for
  interoperability.)
• My third point is that cultivating Strategic
  Alliances are critical for the success of our
  Business Case e.g., Markle Foundation, Esther
  Dyson, Perot Systems, Oracle, etc.
• My final point is that agree with the Australian
  E-Health Frameworks data-driven approach to
  interoperability because it is a more
  sustainable than a connectivity-driven approach
  in a changing environment and suggest that a key
  part of our business case be a Health Informatics
  Interoperability Profile consisting of a
  hierarchy of connected ontologies to be put
  forward in the FEA DRM activity.

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Overview

• 1. A Bit of History
• Meeting with ONCHIT, July 25, 2005.
• 2. Integration Versus Interoperability
• Ontology does agile interoperability!
• 3. The Data Reference Model
• Ontology is a significant part of it!
• 4. Opportunities and Challenges
• How we make the business case.

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1. A Bit of History

• Meeting with ONCHIT, July 25, 2005
• SICoP and the Ontolog Form Partnered on Semantic
  Interoperability in Mid-2004 and Responded to the
  ONCHIT RFI in February 2005.
• SICoP/Ontolog Delivered Two Pilot Projects to
  ONCHIT in First Half of 2005.
• SICoP Participated in the NHIN RFI Response
  Review Task Force.
• CIO Council and FEA/OMB Encouraged SICoP/Ontolog
  to Pilot Executable Integration of the FEA
  Reference Models in Composite Applications
  (Business Ontology) with Individual Agencies.
• GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions Adds
  Health IT Analyst (Marc Wine) to Support FEA,
  FHA, SICoP, Ontolog, etc.
• SICoP/Ontolog Pilots Continue (see slides 6 and
  7).

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1. A Bit of History

• Some Past Presentations
• July 19, 2005 (Collaboration Expedition
  Workshop)
• Building a Hospital Incident Reporting Ontology
  (HIRO) in the Web Ontology Language (OWL) Using
  the JCAHO Patient Safety Event Taxonomy (PSET),
  Liju Fan, KEVRIC, et al.
• Health Information Technology Interoperability
  Coordination, Marc Wine, GSA.
• June 13, 2005 (First DRM Public Forum)
• An RDF Data Model for the Semantic Web (5th
  Oracle Life Sciences User Group Meeting, May
  16-17, 2005), Susie Stephens, Oracle.
• Evolving Data Models Standards Collaborating
  to Achieve Semantic Interoperability ... (from
  ISO 11179, ebXML Core Components, UBL, HL7, UML
  ... to UML2/OCL, RDF, OWL, OWL-S, SWRL, SUMO,
  DOLCE, SCL and other emerging semantic web
  services technologies and standards, PeterYim,
  Co-Convenor of the Ontolog Forum.

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1. A Bit of History

• Some Past Presentations (continued)
• December, 9, 2004 (Collaboration Expedition
  Workshop)
• Standard Vocabularies in Health Care, Kathy Lesh,
  Kevric.
• Building ontologies from the ground up When
  users set out to model their professional
  activity, Mark Musen, Stanford Medical
  Informatics.
• Also presented at the ArchitecturePlus Seminar,
  January 18, 2005.
• Artemis Project A Semantic Web Service-based P2P
  Infrastructure for the Interoperability of
  Medical Information Systems, Professor Asuman
  Dogac, Middle East Technical University, Ankara,
  Turkey.

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2. Integration Versus Interoperability
See for example Australia releases e-health
framework, FCW.Com, August 22, 2005 (4th
paragraph).

• Integration
• Participant systems are assimilated into a larger
  whole
• Systems must conform to a specific way of doing
  things
• Connections (physical and logical) are brittle
• Rules are programmed in custom code, functions,
  or scripts
• Standard data vocabularies are encouraged

• Interoperability
• Participant systems remain autonomous and
  independent
• Systems may share information without strict
  standards conformance
• Connections (physical and logical) are loosely
  coupled
• Rules are modeled in schemas, domain models, and
  mappings
• Local data vocabularies are encouraged

Source Semantic Information Interoperability in
Adaptive Information, by Jeffrey Pollack and
Ralph Hodgson, Wiley Inter-Science, 2004, page 38.
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3. Data Reference Model

• September 14th Second Public Forum Structure
• Phase 1 Taxonomy Information Sharing Tool Kit
  Part 1 SVG (June 28 and September 14)
• Phase 2 Metadata Interoperability Information
  Sharing Tool Kit Part 2 RDF (August 16)
• Phase 3 Executable Data Interoperability
  Information Sharing Tool Kit Part 3 Ontology
  (June 13 and September 14)
• Building Composite Applications with Multiple
  Ontologies, Digital Harbor (confirmed).
• Collaborative Ontology Development Server -
  Multi-User Protégé with Oracle backend, Peter Yim
  and Mark Musen (and Frank Hartel, NCICB?)
  (confirmed).
• See Oracle Plug-in for BioOntologies at
  http//www.oracle.com/technology/industries/life_s
  ciences/index.html
• Social Security Administrations PolicyNet, Duane
  Degler, SSA (confirmed).
• Modeling Documents (FEA Records Management
  Profile Pilot) with SiberSafe FKM (Formal
  Knowledge Management), SiberLogic (invited).
• Cerebra Integration with the Oracle RDF Data
  Model (invited)
• See Collaborative Healthware Case Study at
  http//www.cerebra.com/downloads/case_study_CST.pd
  f

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4. Opportunities and Challenges

• Upcoming Conferences
• September 30, 2005, Personal Health Information
  Workshop, New York City, NY (Esther Dyson)
• See http//www.release1-0.com/events
• Also see Ontology is Overrated Categories,
  Links and Tags and respond!
• October 27, 2005, National Center for Ontological
  Research (NCOR), Gala Inaugural Event, Buffalo,
  NY. Invited Presentation "Towards e-Government
  The Federal Enterprise Architecture Reference
  Model Ontology
• See http//ncor.us/
• November 17-18, 2005, The Government Health IT
  Conference Exhibition (Panel Session Proposal
  Submitted)
• See http//www.e-gov.com/events/2005/ghit/
• Collaboration Workshops and DRM Public Forums
• November 8th and December 6th and 2006.
• Submit a proposal!
• Larger, more complex organizations should do
  nothing that cannot be done as well and as
  cost-effectively by smaller and simpler
  organizations (Australia releases e-health
  framework, FCW.Com, August 22, 2005).