Medical ontology for treatment of clinical data from children and youth

Abstract

The use of information technologies in the field of biomedical data management has grown considerably and is today one of the main fields of use of these technologies. There are several advantages arising either to an individual's health or to public health, particularly because access to clinical data become available anywhere access via the Internet or individual health card. This card will contain personal data accessible from a terminal card reader, identical to the citizen card. This work focuses on the development of an ontology of universal data structure so that the information is accessible and organized in the same way, regardless of the system that use them. In this context there is the need to incorporate security mechanisms, the respect of ethical principles underlying the management and maintenance of clinical data, ensuring maximum confidentiality.

To develop the proposed ontology, for the treatment of clinical data of children and youth is used as reference bulletin health in Portugal. Using this structure, it follows the clear and unambiguous identification of the fields required for registration of clinical information, standardized in a relational model. To ensure the confidentiality of data, identification of the individual is only the number of national health system and are not recorded on the card personal data such as name, address or contact forms.