Assessing the Need for Semantic Data Integration for Surgical Biobanks—A Knowledge Representation Perspective

Abstract

To improve patient outcomes after trauma, the need to decrypt the post-traumatic immune response has been identified. One prerequisite to drive advancement in understanding that domain is the implementation of surgical biobanks. This paper focuses on the outcomes of patients with one of two diagnoses: post-traumatic arthritis and osteomyelitis. In creating surgical biobanks, currently, many obstacles must be overcome. Roadblocks exist around scoping of data that is to be collected, and the semantic integration of these data. In this paper, the generic component model and the Semantic Web technology stack are used to solve issues related to data integration. The results are twofold: (a) a scoping analysis of data and the ontologies required to harmonize and integrate it, and (b) resolution of common data integration issues in integrating data relevant to trauma surgery.

Keywords

• surgical biobank
• post-traumatic arthritis
• osteomyelitis
• semantic data integration
• system theory
• biomedical ontologies