An intelligent edge computing based semantic gateway for healthcare systems interoperability and collaboration

Abstract

The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICTs) in healthcare has the potential of minimizing medical errors, reducing healthcare cost and improving collaboration between healthcare systems which can dramatically improve the healthcare service quality. However interoperability within different healthcare systems (clinics/hospitals/pharmacies) remains an issue of further research due to a lack of collaboration and exchange of healthcare information. To solve this problem, cross healthcare system collaboration is required. This paper proposes a conceptual semantic based healthcare collaboration framework based on Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure that is able to offer a secure cross system information and knowledge exchange between different healthcare systems seamlessly that is readable by both machines and humans. In the proposed framework, an intelligent semantic gateway is introduced where a web application with restful Application Programming Interface (API) is used to expose the healthcare information of each system for collaboration. A case study that exposed the patient's data between two different healthcare systems was practically demonstrated where a pharmacist can access the patient's electronic prescription from the clinic.