Semantic Web for Healthcare?
Is the sematic web or Web 3.0 coming to health care? In this blog on Government Health IT, there is a good explanation of the sematic web and some of the potential uses for healthcare.
"The equivalent Semantic Web technology is Resource Description Framework (RDF). Whereas HTML defines the location of data, RDF describes what that data is. Along with other technologies such as Web Ontology Language, RDF can be used to ascribe meaning to data depending on the context in which it is used."
The potential uses are having intelligent agents find information in an increasingly dense and complex store of health informaiton on the web for:
Technorati: health 2.0
"The equivalent Semantic Web technology is Resource Description Framework (RDF). Whereas HTML defines the location of data, RDF describes what that data is. Along with other technologies such as Web Ontology Language, RDF can be used to ascribe meaning to data depending on the context in which it is used."
The potential uses are having intelligent agents find information in an increasingly dense and complex store of health informaiton on the web for:
- Physician decision support
- bring condition-specific information to consumers
- support health science research and finding medical images
Technorati: health 2.0
I like this idea a lot. It seems that the taxonomy or even folksonomy model is probably much like a process that goes on in a health care provider's head, or between doctors in conversations now. It would seem very powerful to harness that with technology. It will be interesting to see how this will impact patients' perceptions - Will people trust decisions more when backed up by semantic-web like logic? Perhaps it could even save lives by recommending tests or diagnoses doctors did not think of. Or will patients be afraid to trust these algorithms or fear that their doctors will do less?
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