An ehealth case study: Applying semantic web service technology in the healthcare environment

Abstract

In this chapter we describe two case studies of Semantic Web Services applied in the eHealth domain. Starting from the interoperability problem, which naturally arises in distributed environments such as the healthcare systems, we briefly introduce the state of the art in eHealth standards (e.g. HL7, openEHR, etc.) and the trends towards semantic interoperability. In particular, we claim that eHealth will greatly benefit from the adoption of Semantic Web Service technology and we show how we proof this concept in two case studies: Glue, a WSMO discovery engine, used to automate the discovery of second opinion services for General Practitioners, and Artemis which enables eHealthcare institutes to exchange health care messages in an interoperable manner through semantically enrichedWeb Services and semantic mediation. © 2007 Springer.