OMG to conduct Terminology Services Information Day to explore terminology services

OMG(TM) today announced that a special event, Terminology Services Information Day, will be co-located with the OMG Technical Meeting in Long Beach, CA USA on December 8, 2009. For more information and to register for this special event, please visit: https://www.omg.org/ 

The Terminology Services Information Day will explore terminology services in terms of their business purpose, their role in furthering the semantic web, and their importance in achieving true semantic interoperability, ending the day with an open forum roundtable discussion.

According to Christopher Chute, M.D., Dr.P.H., Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Mayo Clinic, and an industry-leader in the field of Medical Informatics, "Biomedical and clinical research increasingly involves collaborations that demand the sharing of comparable and consistent data across multiple organizations. A standardized set of terminology services is a critical component needed to attain this objective. I am encouraged to see that this need is now being recognized and addressed by the broader IT community."

Speakers on the program are distinguished professionals working in the semantic interoperability space, with industry experts from both within and outside of the healthcare domain. The session is intended for audiences with an interest in semantic technologies and in terminology and ontology usage and management. It will also serve as an introduction to Healthcare IT in the context of efforts that are internationally recognized as a target environment for e-health programs within and outside of the US.

"One of the most vexing problems plaguing both commercial and governmental enterprises alike is the very real problem of determining what something really means," said Victor Harrison, Director, NPS Distinguished Engineer Group, CSC. "The promise of the Common Terminology Services Revision 2 standard (CTS 2) to deal with multiple coding systems from one source just-in-time is very compelling. I welcome these discussions and believe they are equally applicable outside of healthcare as within it."

Presentation topics include:

• An Introduction to Information Interoperability and Terminology, by Ken Rubin, Federal Healthcare Portfolio, HP Enterprise Services
• The Business Case for CTS2, by Dr. Jobst Landgrebe, Enterprise Architect, International Institute for the Safety of Medicines (ii4sm)
• History of Terminology Services in Medicine, by Harold Solbrig, Technical Specialist, Mayo Foundation
• IHTSDO, SNOMED and its Role in Furthering Semantic Understanding, by John Gutai, CTO, International Health Terminology Standards Development Organization
• "Hitchhikers Guide to CTS2," by Russ Hamm, Informatics Consultant, Apelon, Inc.
• Beyond Healthcare - Cross-domain Applicability of CTS2, by Elisa Kendall, CEO, Sandpiper Software, Inc.
• Roundtable Discussion, Moderated by Ken Rubin