Advancing Health Care Management with the Semantic Web

Health care management is a combined effort involving the patients and their families/caregivers, professional health care providers, medical schemes, support groups, and employers. Important to all stakeholders is the obtaining and sharing of credible information. The WWW currently allows the sharing and distribution of information that would otherwise not have been available, but it is plagued by the sheer volume of information which is not connected on the semantic level, and of which much is irrelevant and has little guarantee of accuracy. The purpose of the semantic Web is to bring structure to the content of Web pages allowing software agents to carry out intelligent tasks for the user. This opens a new set of opportunities that can be utilised to improve health care management on a personal and health care provider level. The aim of this research in progress is to identify the needs and match them to the services possible with the semantic Web.