Health data semantics: Exploring requirements for sustainable health systems

Health data cannot easily move from one healthcare provider
to another, let alone between different countries. There is a de facto lack
of health data interoperability in many healthcare systems preventing
mobility and sharing of health data. Hitherto the literature has mainly
considered technical aspects and challenges related to interoperability,
but this paper will foremost explore semantic aspects. Using two cases of
exploring data interoperability and the democratisation of health data as
a backdrop, this paper presents existing challenges preventing sustainable
health systems by focusing on semantic aspects of data interoperability
in healthcare. A key finding is that data interoperability is possible and
standardised data semantics are key resources to support data access
within or across systems, for example between countries. The democratisation
of health data, allowing different health systems to interact with
each other, requires management of the shared semantic resources and
the governance structures defining them. Domain experts, like medical
doctors, can play an important role in co-designing and managing such
shared, semantic resources.