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International Symposium on Foundations of Health Informatics Engineering and Systems

FHIES 2013: Foundations of Health Information Engineering and Systems pp 107–124Cite as

An Ontology for Regulating eHealth Interoperability in Developing African Countries

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 8315))

Abstract

eHealth governance and regulation are necessary in low resource African countries to ensure effective and equitable use of health information technology and to realize national eHealth goals such as interoperability, adoption of standards and data integration. eHealth regulatory frameworks are under-developed in low resource settings, which hampers the progression towards coherent and effective national health information systems. Ontologies have the potential to clarify issues around interoperability and the effectiveness of different standards to deal with different aspects of interoperability. Ontologies can facilitate drafting, reusing, implementing and compliance testing of eHealth regulations. In this regard, we have developed an OWL ontology to capture key concepts and relations concerning interoperability and standards. The ontology includes an operational definition for interoperability and is an initial step towards the development of a knowledge representation modeling platform for eHealth regulation and governance.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UKZN/CSIR Meraka Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research and, Health Architecture Laboratory, School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Deshendran Moodley, Christopher J. Seebregts, Anban W. Pillay & Thomas Meyer

  2. Jembi Health Systems NPC, Cape Town and Durban, South Africa

    Christopher J. Seebregts

Authors
  1. Deshendran Moodley
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  2. Christopher J. Seebregts
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  3. Anban W. Pillay
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  4. Thomas Meyer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Oxford University, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, OX1 3QD, Oxford, UK

    Jeremy Gibbons

  2. Department of Mathematics, St. Francis Xavier University, P.O. Box 5000, B2G 2W5, Antigonish, NS, Canada

    Wendy MacCaull

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Moodley, D., Seebregts, C.J., Pillay, A.W., Meyer, T. (2014). An Ontology for Regulating eHealth Interoperability in Developing African Countries. In: Gibbons, J., MacCaull, W. (eds) Foundations of Health Information Engineering and Systems. FHIES 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8315. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-53956-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-53956-5_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-53955-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-53956-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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