Semantic Interoperability in Healthcare Information for EHR Databases

Healthcare information is complex, distributed and non-structured in nature. Integration of information is important to retrieve patient history, for knowledge sharing and to formulate queries. Large scale adoption of electronic healthcare applications requires semantic interoperability. lnteroperability of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) is important because patients have become mobile, treatment and health care providers have increased, and also, have become more specialized. The paper analyses the role of semantic interoperability in healthcare. The system modeling approach has been analyzed with a view of supporting system-to-system and user-system interactions. In addition, query interfaces have been considered at varying levels of user and system activities.