Abstract—Interoperability of health information systems requires common clinical terminologies and services that make those terminologies available on a shared infrastructure, i.e. Web-based terminology servers. Terminology servers share characteristics with ontology servers, but also provide further services, e.g., extended linguistic functionality. There is increasing interest in research and development of Web-based clinical terminology servers. While several systems have been developed, few studies exist comparing their functionality and maturity. This paper identifies a list of service requirements based on a systematic literature review and uses these requirements to perform an assessment of current maturity of terminology servers. It further identifies which terminology services are sufficiently mature to be standardized and shared in large interoperable ehealth system infrastructures. This paper also exposes concerns and research directions related to shared terminology servers such as Web-based servers, e.g., in areas of privacy and security.

Index Terms—eHealth, terminology server, interoperability, SNOMED-CT

Cite: Neil Barrett and Jens H. Weber-Jahnke, "eHealth Interoperability with Web-based Medical Terminology Services - A Study of Service Requirements and Maturity," Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 153-160, November 2009. doi:10.4304/jetwi.1.2.153-160