To show the benefits the Semantic Web offers to medicine, we present a set of application examples currently in use. These examples are data harmonization, drug selection, and public health behavior.
Data harmonization in Chinese Medicine [2]
It is well known that Chinese Medicine has an special perspective of the human body. Practitioners of this unique medicine consider that many components are part of the health condition of a patient. Some of these components are the ideas of “ying-yang”, “five-element”, food, and spirit.
On the other hand, Western Medicine considers Chinese Medicine an alternative method of healing rather than a scientific one. Conventional Western Medicine views the human body as parts, for example, body sections (upper or lower) or the different organs. Western Medicine has, however, scientifically proven the efficacy of Chinese Medicine in the prevention and therapy of some illnesses, and is interested in learning more from the vast stores of Chinese medical knowledge.
To that end, a bridge between the Western and Chinese medical databases is necessary. Currently, the greatest interest is in data related to biomedical and clinical research. A significant and growing amount of literature on these topics is available in a wide variety of databases. However, the language barrier makes Western access difficult because most of the literature on Chinese Medicine is written with Chinese characters.
Semantic Web (SW) technology has been used to solve this problem. The China Academy of Chinese Medicine Sciences has developed a method for sharing Chinese medical literature.
Because of the difference in view of medicine, a simple translation was not sufficient. An ontology mechanism was developed to correct translations between Chinese characters and western terms, and connect data in a semantic layer sitting on top of the existing relational databases. This makes knowledge of Chinese medicine available to the rest of the world. This integration of East and West is a positive step in collaboration among health care and life science.
Figure 1. Architecture of the Semantic Web layer and its role in unifying and linking heterogeneous relational data.
References
Cheung, K., & Chen, H. Semantic-based search and query system for the traditional chinese medicine community. Retrieved 5/17/2010, 2010, from http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/UniZheijang/
Cheung, K., & Chen, H. (2010). Semantic web for data harmonization in chinese medicine. Chinese Medicine, 5, 2. doi:10.1186/1749-8546-5-2
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