Healthc Inform Res.  2016 Jan;22(1):22-29. 10.4258/hir.2016.22.1.22.

Convergence of Health Level Seven Version 2 Messages to Semantic Web Technologies for Software-Intensive Systems in Telemedicine Trauma Care

• Menezes PM
• Cook TW
• Cavalini L

• KMID: 2166913
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.4258/hir.2016.22.1.22

Abstract

OBJECTIVES
To present the technical background and the development of a procedure that enriches the semantics of Health Level Seven version 2 (HL7v2) messages for software-intensive systems in telemedicine trauma care.
METHODS
This study followed a multilevel model-driven approach for the development of semantically interoperable health information systems. The Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) ABCDE protocol was adopted as the use case. A prototype application embedded the semantics into an HL7v2 message as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) file, which was validated against an XML schema that defines constraints on a common reference model. This message was exchanged with a second prototype application, developed on the Mirth middleware, which was also used to parse and validate both the original and the hybrid messages.
RESULTS
Both versions of the data instance (one pure XML, one embedded in the HL7v2 message) were equally validated and the RDF-based semantics recovered by the receiving side of the prototype from the shared XML schema.
CONCLUSIONS
This study demonstrated the semantic enrichment of HL7v2 messages for intensive-software telemedicine systems for trauma care, by validating components of extracts generated in various computing environments. The adoption of the method proposed in this study ensures the compliance of the HL7v2 standard in Semantic Web technologies.

Keyword

Telemedicine; Health Information Systems; Information Technologies and Communication Projects; Information Exchange; Health Level Seven

MeSH Terms

Compliance
Health Information Systems
Health Level Seven*
Health Status*
Semantics*
Telemedicine*

Figure

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  Figure 1 Specific destination of the XML data instance.

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  Figure 2 Specific destination of the Health Level 7 version 2 (HL7v2) message.

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  Figure 3 Description of the architectural prototype. MLHIM: Multilevel Healthcare Information Modeling.

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