Although the goal of achieving semantic interoperability of electronic health records (EHRs) is pursued by many researchers, it has not been accomplished yet. In this paper, we present a proposal that smoothes out the way toward the achievement of that goal. In particular, our study focuses on medical diagnoses statements. In summary, the main contributions of our ontology-based proposal are the following: first, it includes a canonical ontology whose EHR-related terms focus on semantic aspects. As a result, their descriptions are independent of languages and technology aspects used in different organizations to represent EHRs. Moreover, those terms are related to their corresponding codes in well-known medical terminologies. Second, it deals with modules that allow obtaining rich ontological representations of EHR information managed by proprietary models of health information systems. The features of one specific module are shown as reference. Third, it considers the necessary mapping axioms between ontological terms enhanced with so-called path mappings. This feature smoothes out structural differences between heterogeneous EHR representations, allowing proper alignment of information.

翻译：尽管许多研究人员致力于实现电子健康记录（EHR）的语义互操作性目标，但该目标至今尚未达成。本文提出了一种方案，旨在为该目标的实现铺平道路。我们的研究特别聚焦于医疗诊断陈述。概括而言，基于本体的方案主要贡献如下：第一，它包含一个规范本体，其中与EHR相关的术语专注于语义层面。因此，这些术语的描述独立于不同组织中用于表示EHR的语言和技术细节。同时，这些术语与权威医学术语系统中的对应编码建立了关联。第二，该方案涉及若干模块，能够获取由健康信息系统专有模型管理的EHR信息的丰富本体表征，并以特定模块的特征作为参考示例。第三，方案考虑了必要的本体术语间映射公理，并通过所谓的路径映射（path mappings）进行增强。这一特性能够平滑异质EHR表示之间的结构差异，从而实现信息间的恰当对齐。