INSERM UMR936, Université de Rennes 1, Rennes, France.
J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2013 Sep-Oct;20(5):986-94. doi: 10.1136/amiajnl-2012-001312. Epub 2013 Apr 9.
Biomedical research increasingly relies on the integration of information from multiple heterogeneous data sources. Despite the fact that structural and terminological aspects of interoperability are interdependent and rely on a common set of requirements, current efforts typically address them in isolation. We propose a unified ontology-based knowledge framework to facilitate interoperability between heterogeneous sources, and investigate if using the LexEVS terminology server is a viable implementation method.
We developed a framework based on an ontology, the general information model (GIM), to unify structural models and terminologies, together with relevant mapping sets. This allowed a uniform access to these resources within LexEVS to facilitate interoperability by various components and data sources from implementing architectures.
Our unified framework has been tested in the context of the EU Framework Program 7 TRANSFoRm project, where it was used to achieve data integration in a retrospective diabetes cohort study. The GIM was successfully instantiated in TRANSFoRm as the clinical data integration model, and necessary mappings were created to support effective information retrieval for software tools in the project.
We present a novel, unifying approach to address interoperability challenges in heterogeneous data sources, by representing structural and semantic models in one framework. Systems using this architecture can rely solely on the GIM that abstracts over both the structure and coding. Information models, terminologies and mappings are all stored in LexEVS and can be accessed in a uniform manner (implementing the HL7 CTS2 service functional model). The system is flexible and should reduce the effort needed from data sources personnel for implementing and managing the integration.
生物医学研究越来越依赖于整合来自多个异构数据源的信息。尽管互操作性的结构和术语方面是相互依存的，并依赖于一组共同的要求，但当前的努力通常是将它们孤立地处理。我们提出了一个基于本体的统一知识框架，以促进异构源之间的互操作性，并研究使用 LexEVS 术语服务器是否是一种可行的实现方法。
我们开发了一个基于本体的框架，即通用信息模型（GIM），以统一结构模型和术语，以及相关的映射集。这允许在 LexEVS 中对这些资源进行统一访问，以通过各种组件和来自实施架构的数据源来促进互操作性。
我们的统一框架已经在欧盟框架计划 7 TRANSFoRm 项目中进行了测试，在该项目中，它被用于实现回顾性糖尿病队列研究中的数据集成。GIM 已成功实例化为 TRANSFoRm 中的临床数据集成模型，并创建了必要的映射以支持项目中软件工具的有效信息检索。
我们提出了一种新颖的、统一的方法来解决异构数据源中的互操作性挑战，通过在一个框架中表示结构和语义模型。使用此架构的系统可以仅依赖于抽象结构和编码的 GIM。信息模型、术语和映射都存储在 LexEVS 中，可以以统一的方式访问（实现 HL7 CTS2 服务功能模型）。该系统具有灵活性，应减少数据源人员在实现和管理集成方面所需的工作量。
