A first look at HealthCyberMap medical semantic subject search engine

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Boulos, Maged N. Kamel

Affiliations: School for Health, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK. Tel.: +44 1225 384204; Fax: +44 1225 383225; E-mail: M.N.K.Boulos@bath.ac.uk

Abstract: HealthCyberMap (http://healthcybermap.semanticweb.org) is a Semantic Web project that aims at mapping selected parts of health information resources in cyberspace in novel semantic ways to improve their retrieval and navigation. This paper describes HealthCyberMap semantic subject search engine methodology and early prototype which attempt to overcome the limitations of conventional free text search engines. Explicit concepts in resource metadata map onto a brokering domain ontology (a clinical terminology or classification) allowing a Semantic Web search engine to infer implicit meanings (synonyms and semantic relationships) not directly mentioned in either the resource or its metadata. Similarly, user queries would map to the same ontology allowing the search engine to infer the implicit semantics of user queries and use them to optimise retrieval. Related issues of metadata, clinical terminologies and automatic vs. manual indexing of medical Web resources are also discussed, together with future methodological directions, which include the use of a true terminology server as an intelligent broker between user queries and HealthCyberMap pool of resource metadata. A comparative evaluation of the new engine based on relevance metrics is also proposed.

Keywords: clinical terminologies for medical resource indexing, medical metadata, medical semantic search engine, medical information retrieval, medical Semantic Web

DOI: 10.3233/THC-2004-12104

Journal: Technology and Health Care, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 33-41, 2004