Slide 1

Semantic Interoperability for theOffice of the National Coordinator forHealth Information Technology

Brand Niemann and

the Health Information TechnologyOntology Pilot Community of Practice

November 9, 2006

Bio

•EPA Office of the Chief Information Officer andAssistant Administrator for EnvironmentalInformation (OEI):

–Data Architect

•Federal CIO Council’s Best Practices Committee(BPC):

–Secretariat

•Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice(SICoP):

–Co-Chair

Overview

•1. The Broader Context

•2. History of Support for ONC/NHIN

•3. Proposed Next Steps

•4. Questions and Answers

1. The Broader Context

•The Federal CIO Council has FourCommittees:

–Executive Committee (EC): OMB SeniorLeadership and the Co-Chairs of the OtherThree Committees

–Architecture & Infrastructure (AIC)

–Best Practices (BPC)

–IT Work Force (WFC)

1. The Broader Context

•The Best Practices Committee has FiveCommunities of Practice:

–Enterprise Process Improvement (EPIC)

–IT Performance Management (ITPM)

–Knowledge Management (KMWG)

–Semantic Interoperability (SICoP)

–Spatial Ontology (SOCoP)

1. The Broader Context

•The Semantic Interoperability CoP (SICoP) ischartered to do White Papers (2), Pilots (many),and Conferences (5th on October 10-11th).

•The SICoP has Six Work Groups:

–Agile Financial Data Services (AFDS)

–Health Information Technology Ontology Project(HITOP)

–Cross-Domain Semantic Interoperability (CDSI)

–Ontology and Taxonomy Coordination (ONTAC)

–Semantic Wikis and Information Management (SWIM)

–Vocabulary Management (VMWG)

2. History of Support for ONC/NHIN

•(1) Ontology-Driven Information Systemfor Clinical Support (Dr. Mark Musen,Stanford Medical Informatics)

•(2) Joint Response to RFI with PartnerOntolog Forum (Community of Practice ofthe World’s Ontologists)

•(3) Analysis of the RFIs Using SemanticTechnologies (Demonstrated to the ONC)

2. History of Support for ONC/NHIN

•(4) Founding Member of the National Center forOntological Research (Recipient of NIHRoadmap Grant for Ontologies in Bioinformaticsand Center of Excellence in BiomedicalOntologies)

•(5) Started Health Information TechnologyOntology Pilot (Activities Documented in WikiPage)

•(6) Federal Health Architecture’s DataArchitecture WG Pilot (Health US 2005 Reportas a DRM 2.0-Compliant Data Network)

2. History of Support for ONC/NHIN

•(7) 4th Semantic Technologies for E-GovernmentConference (SemantxLife Sciences SemanticIndexing and Searching for Boston Children’sHospital and PubMed)

•(8) Joint Open Group/SICoP Conference onSemantic Naming and IdentificationTechnologies (EHR Use Case)

•(9) Tutorial by Professor Ken Baclawski onOntologies for Genomic Data (Co-author ofOntologies for Bioinformatics)

2. History of Support for ONC/NHIN

•(10) Interagency Environmental Heath DataAction Team (EHDAT) (Pilot NetworkFramework Using Organization-Topic Matrix andInfrastructure Using Semantic Wikis)

•(11) First NIHN Forum (Testimony to theNCVHS and Requested Followup)

•(12) Open Collaboration: Networking NationalHealth Information Technology (CollaborativeExpedition Workshop #50, April 18, 2006, atNSF)

2. History of Support for ONC/NHIN

•(13) Open Collaboration: Networking SemanticInteroperability (Collaborative Expedition Workshop #53,August 15, 2006, at NSF):

–Mike Cummens (MD), Semantic Interoperability for the DoDComputerized Medical Record System.

•(14) 5th Semantic Interoperability for E-GovernmentConference, October 10-11th, and 2nd SOA for E-Government Conference, October 30-31st:

–Arun Majumdar, Case Study: Big Pharma. Company – SemanticSOA & meta-model for a global scale interoperability across 200companies and lines of business.

•(15) 2nd SOA for E-Government Conference, October 30-31st ,SOA CoP Demo for the Financial Management &Human Resources Lines of Business (Has Application tothe FHA LoB and NHIN)

3. Proposed Next Steps

•IT adoption can be seen as developing in four fairlydistinct operational and financial levels where:

–Level 1 represents no electronic data; and NO STANDARDS.

–Level 2 represents rudimentary electronic data at the level ofemail and fax; NO HIT STANDARDS.

–Level 3 represents machine-organizable data, such as simpleflat and hierarchical and relational databases with someintegration of processing and can be seen as the current level atwhich IT-savvy businesses operate and which represents asizable monetary investment; and chaotic HIT STANDARDS.

–Level 4 represents machine-interpretable data, where“interpretable” signifies that data is organized by semanticprinciples such that the meaning as well as data can be usedby a distributed network such as the NHIN envisions ANDOntology-Driven HIT Standards.

3. Proposed Next Steps

•HITOP Recommends Building on the WorkDone Thus Far to Extend the Demonstrations ofSemantic Interoperability for ONC/NHIN by:

–Establishing a Semantic Interoperability Work Groupin ONC with the FHA as its domain;

–Further extending the Terminology Services Bureaucomponent of the Northrop Grumman NHINPrototype; and

–Further development of the Web Services Registry forthe Health Informatics and Emergency Managementdomains.

4. Questions and Answers

•Brand Niemann:

–Niemann.brand@epa.gov

–202-236-6432

•Marc Wine:

–Marc.wine@gsa.gov

–202-255-6655

•HITOP Wiki Page:

–http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?HealthInformationTechnologyCommunityofPractice