title: Convergence of Health Level Seven Version 2 Messages to Semantic Web Technologies for Software-Intensive Systems in Telemedicine Trauma Care.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To present the technical background and the development of a procedure that enriches the semantics of Health Level Seven version 2 (HL7v2) messages for software-intensive systems in telemedicine trauma care.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study followed a multilevel model-driven approach for the development of semantically interoperable health information systems. The Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) ABCDE protocol was adopted as the use case. A prototype application embedded the semantics into an HL7v2 message as an eXtensible Markup Language (XML) file, which was validated against an XML schema that defines constraints on a common reference model. This message was exchanged with a second prototype application, developed on the Mirth middleware, which was also used to parse and validate both the original and the hybrid messages.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Both versions of the data instance (one pure XML, one embedded in the HL7v2 message) were equally validated and the RDF-based semantics recovered by the receiving side of the prototype from the shared XML schema.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study demonstrated the semantic enrichment of HL7v2 messages for intensive-software telemedicine systems for trauma care, by validating components of extracts generated in various computing environments. The adoption of the method proposed in this study ensures the compliance of the HL7v2 standard in Semantic Web technologies.
authors.affiliation: Post-Graduation Program in Civil Defense and Security, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
authors.forename: Pedro Monteiro
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Menezes
authors.affiliation: Emergent Group for Research and Innovation on Healthcare Information Technology, Rio de Janeiro State University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
authors.forename: Timothy Wayne
authors.initials: TW
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luciana Tricai
authors.initials: LT
authors.lastname: Cavalini
keywords: Health Information Systems; Health Level Seven; Information Exchange; Information Technologies and Communication Projects; Telemedicine