S. Bonacina and F. Pinciroli (Italy)
Consumer Health Vocabulary, Domain Ontology, Protégé, Database, and Tele-Homecare
In telemedicine systems involving consumer applications is important to present health information using consumer-familiar terms. Recently developed patient- and consumer-centered health record systems allow the patients to participate in their healthcare, however terms used by the medical professionals and consumers are quite different. In this paper, we describe some approaches for understanding the best working architecture for carrying out the necessary analysis of the correspondence between the medical vocabulary of the consumer/family and that of the doctor, in the Italian language. In the household, we considered four medical areas as follows: a) "Pregnancy and the Newborn", b) "Emergency Care at Home", c) "Paediatrics", d) "Geriatrics" (for the outpatient). We developed ontologies for the a), b), and d) areas in Italian and/or English languages, while for the c) area, we developed a tool, based on relational databases, which find correspondences between the medical vocabulary of the consumer and that of the doctor. Then, we carried out tests of bi-directional matching between the family’s and the doctor’s medical lexicons within the a), b), c), and d) areas. Overall, this is an essential step towards effective home care and telemedicine services.
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