The Australian e-Health Research Centre is investigating metadata and ontologies tools for use in the Australian health care and life sciences domain to support medical research and improve health care. Metadata and ontologies are tools that can be applied to documents and other data sources which enable the user to query (ask questions of) the underlying data sources in a more sophisticated, structured and meaningful manner.
Using metadata to describe data (such as in structured databases and free text) and ontologies to describe relationships between data, is increasingly used in information and knowledge management. SNOMED CT, a clinical terminology, is one of the largest examples of an ontology and has been endorsed by Australian health agencies and the National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) as the clinical terminology to be used in the collection, management and sharing of health and health related data.
The aim is to ensure that data collected in the future will be consistent across the country and will enable better sharing of data for clinical and research purposes.
This project will focus on using ontologies to describe data in existing databases. Existing ontologies, in particular SNOMED CT, will be utilised. This presents many research opportunities to address, such as:
- Concepts that are not representable using clinical terms from an existing ontology
- The large size of the existing ontology
- Errors and inconsistencies in the existing ontology
The mapping of existing data to expressions using an ontology involves:
- Normalising the expressions, which may contain multiple codes from an ontology, for consistency purposes
- Calculating subsumption relationships, so that the relationship between expressions is understood
- Finding efficient ways to process the existing ontology extended with new terms and relationships
This work aims to make it possible to fully describe data which is already collected using existing ontologies. The outcomes of the project can then be used in building better information systems with data which is already collected.
The Australian e-Health Research Centre is also researching other ways of using clinical terminologies. These include:
- Improving the classification of free text document by mapping words and phrases to concepts in the ontology
- Using ontologies to improve the process of collecting data
- Aiding in the uptake of SNOMED CT in the Australian Health System
