title: Enabling semantic interoperability in multi-centric clinical trials on breast cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Post-genomic clinical trials require the participation of multiple institutions, and collecting data from several hospitals, laboratories and research facilities. This paper presents a standard-based solution to provide a uniform access endpoint to patient data involved in current clinical research.
  
  
  METHODS
  The proposed approach exploits well-established standards such as HL7 v3 or SPARQL and medical vocabularies such as SNOMED CT, LOINC and HGNC. A novel mechanism to exploit semantic normalization among HL7-based data models and biomedical ontologies has been created by using Semantic Web technologies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Different types of queries have been used for testing the semantic interoperability solution described in this paper. The execution times obtained in the tests enable the development of end user tools within a framework that requires efficient retrieval of integrated data.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The proposed approach has been successfully tested by applications within the INTEGRATE and EURECA EU projects. These applications have been deployed and tested for: (i) patient screening, (ii) trial recruitment, and (iii) retrospective analysis; exploiting semantically interoperable access to clinical patient data from heterogeneous data sources.
authors: Biomedical Informatics Group, DLSIIS & DIA, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo S/N, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: ralonso@infomed.dia.fi.upm.es.
authors: Raul
authors: R
authors: Alonso-Calvo
authors: Biomedical Informatics Group, DLSIIS & DIA, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo S/N, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain.
authors: David
authors: D
authors: Perez-Rey
authors: Biomedical Informatics Group, DLSIIS & DIA, Facultad de Informática, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo S/N, 28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain.
authors: Sergio
authors: S
authors: Paraiso-Medina
authors: Custodix NV, Kortrijksesteenweg 214b3, Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium.
authors: Brecht
authors: B
authors: Claerhout
authors: Institut Jules Bordet, 121 Boulevard de Waterloo, Brussels, Belgium.
authors: Philippe
authors: P
authors: Hennebert
authors: PHILIPS Research Europe, High Tech Campus 34, Eindhoven, Netherlands.
authors: Anca
authors: A
authors: Bucur
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy*; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D019295:Computational Biology; D003628:Database Management Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D016208:Databases, Factual / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020407:Internet; D015337:Multicenter Studies as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D009626:Terminology as Topic
keywords: Clinical research informatics; Clinical trials; Data integration; HL7; SNOMED CT; Semantic interoperability