Authors:
Arkalgud Ramaprasad
1
;
Sridhar S. Papagari
1
and
Joy Keeler
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Illinois at Chicago, United States
;
2
The MITRE Corporation, United States
Keyword(s):
eHealth, Health care, Ontology, Ontological analysis.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Cloud Computing
;
e-Commerce in the Health Sector
;
e-Health
;
Health Information Systems
;
Healthcare Management Systems
;
Platforms and Applications
Abstract:
The ‘e’ in eBusiness, eCommerce, eGovernment, and eHealth represents the transformation of the traditional domains by the current ability to transport information using information and communication technologies. In this paper we present an ontological analysis of the transformation of health care by eHealth. The five dimensions of the ontology are derived by parsing the definition of eHealth as ‘transporting information to transform health care’. They are: (a) information, (b) spatial transportation, (c) temporal transportation, (d) semiotic transportation, and (e) health care. Each dimension is defined by a taxonomy. Each sentence, formed by concatenating categories across the five dimensions using appropriate conjunctive words and phrases, is a natural language descriptor of eHealth. The set of all such sentences is a closed description of eHealth.