Towards a semantic interoperability environment

The variety of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) makes interoperability a global trend in healthcare, which is of a paramount interest to the Brazilian Ministry of Health. In particular, semantic interoperability receives a special attention since it ensures that different health information systems make the same interpretation of the exchanged information. Although several standards have been documented to support interoperability (e.g. HL7 and IHE), achieving the semantic one is still a challenge. In this context, this paper represents a step towards supporting seamless semantic interoperability by combining different health standards (OpenEHR, IHE and HL7). It describes a software architecture that illustrates the role of different health standards in a semantic interoperability environment. Moreover, it introduces a process aiming at supporting the sematic validation of clinical documents. Finally, it documents several findings, such as benefits of the combined use of OpenEHR and IHE profiles.