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Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168

CENTERIS – International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems / ProjMAN –

CENTERIS
International – International
Conference Conference
on Project on ENTERprise
MANagement / HCist –Information Systems
International / ProjMAN
Conference –
on Health
International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist – International Conference
and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022 on Health
and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022
Interoperability approach for Hospital Information Systems based
Interoperability approach for Hospital Information Systems based
on the composition of web services
on the composition of web services
Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBAa,a,* Yaya TRAOREbb Sadouanouan MALOaa
Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA * Yaya TRAORE Sadouanouan MALO
a
Algebra, discrete Mathematics and Informatics laboratory (LAMDI), Bobo-Dioulasso
a
Algebra, discrete
b Mathematics
Mathematics and Informatics
and Informatics laboratory
laboratory (LAMI),(LAMDI), Bobo-Dioulasso
Ouagadougou
b
Mathematics and Informatics laboratory (LAMI), Ouagadougou

Abstract
Abstract
Nowadays, many health centers use Hospital Information Systems (HIS) for the daily management of center activities such as
Nowadays,
patient data many health centers
management. use Hospital
In Burkina Faso, many Information Systems
HIS are used (HIS) for
for patient datathe daily management
management but theseofsystems
center activities such as
cannot cooperate
patient data management. In Burkina Faso, many HIS are used for patient data management but these systems
because the data sources are often heterogeneous. In order to guarantee a better diagnosis in patient management, physicians need cannot cooperate
because
to accessthe data
these sources
data sources areinoften heterogeneous.
a unique way through Inqueries.
order toFor
guarantee a better of
better analysis diagnosis in patient
a patient's management,
situation, physicians
the health worker need
may want
to access
to access multiple
these datadata
sources
sources in athat
unique way
do not through
belong queries.
to the For better
same health analysis
center. ofonly
This is a patient's situation,
possible theinvolved
if the HIS health worker may want
interoperate. In
atoprevious
access multiple
work, wedata sources that
proposed do not belong toarchitecture
an interoperability the same health
basedcenter. This is web
on semantic only services.
possible ifThis
the solution
HIS involved
has theinteroperate.
advantage of In
anot
previous work, we proposed an interoperability architecture based on semantic web services. This solution
modifying the current organization of health centers. Indeed, for a complex query, a composition of web services is a solution has the advantage of
notsatisfy
to modifying the current
different needs.organization
In this paper, of health centers.
we detail our Indeed,
approachforfora complex
composing query, a composition
semantic of web In
web services. services is a solution
our approach, the
to satisfy different
functionalities of eachneeds. In this paper,
HIS application willwe
be detail our approach
implemented by a web forservice
composing semantic
semantically web services.
annotated In our approach,
by an ontology. An ontology- the
functionalities
based mediation of service
each HIS application
is used to enrichwillthe
be physician
implemented by and
query a web
theservice
MiniCon semantically
algorithm annotated
to create aby an ontology.
composite webAn ontology-
service. The
based mediation
composite serviceisisexecuted
web service used to enrich
to returnthethe
physician
requestedquery
data.and the MiniCon algorithm to create a composite web service. The
composite web service is executed to
© 2022 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. return the requested data.
© 2022
© 2023 The
The Authors.
Authors. Published
Published by by ELSEVIER
Elsevier B.V.B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
This is
This is an
an open
open access
access article
article under
under the CC CC BY-NC-ND
BY-NC-ND license
license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS – International Conference on ENTERprise
Peer-review under
Peer-review underresponsibility
responsibility ofofthe
thescientific committee
scientific committeeof the CENTERIS
of the CENTERIS – International Conference
– International on ENTERprise Information
Information
Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement /MANagement
Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project -Conference
/ HCistConference
HCist - International International onConference
ENTERprise
on Health on Care
and Social
Information
Health and Systems
Social Care/ ProjMAN
Information - International
Systems and Conference
Technologieson 2022
Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on
Information Systems and Technologies 2022
Health
Keywords:andWeb
Social Care
service Information
composition, Systems
Hospital and Technologies
Information 2022
System, Interoperability, ontology
Keywords: Web service composition, Hospital Information System, Interoperability, ontology

* Corresponding author.
* Corresponding
E-mail address:author.
tapslyd@gmail.com
E-mail address: tapslyd@gmail.com
1877-0509 © 2022 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V.
1877-0509
This © 2022
is an open The article
access Authors. Published
under the CCby ELSEVIERlicense
BY-NC-ND B.V. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
This is an open
Peer-review underaccess article under
responsibility the CC BY-NC-ND
of the scientific committee license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
of the CENTERIS – International Conference on ENTERprise Information Systems /
Peer-review
ProjMAN under responsibility
- International of the
Conference onscientific committee of the
Project MANagement CENTERIS
/ HCist – International
- International Conference
Conference on Healthonand
ENTERprise
Social CareInformation
InformationSystems
Systems/
ProjMAN - International
and Technologies 2022 Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference on Health and Social Care Information Systems
and © 20232022
Technologies
1877-0509 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the CENTERIS – International Conference on ENTERprise
Information Systems / ProjMAN - International Conference on Project MANagement / HCist - International Conference
on Health and Social Care Information Systems and Technologies 2022
10.1016/j.procs.2023.01.397
1162 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168
2 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

1. Introduction

The last few decades have been characterized by the development and use of hospital information systems (HIS)
by many health care facilities [1]. In Burkina Faso, several hospital information systems [2], [3] are currently used in
many health centers.
These systems use different and heterogeneous data sources. This makes it difficult for a user (Nursing staff, Health
insurance agent, etc.) to find information on a patient's record, especially if the patient has had consultations in several
health centers. For a better coordination of health services, it is necessary to set up an interoperability system between
hospital information systems. In [4], a semantic interoperability architecture has been proposed. The proposed
approach uses a mediator based on a global ontology. The global ontology is obtained from local ontologies generated
from HIS applications. The functionalities of each HIS application are implemented by a web service semantically
annotated by the local ontology generated from the application. The role of semantic annotation is to solve the problem
of semantic conflict that could occur given the heterogeneity of data and the diversity of users. The role of the mediator
in the proposed architecture is to allow the composition of web services in the event of a complex request. However,
[4] offers a global view of the architecture without going into implementation details. In this paper, we detail the
implementation of our semantic interoperability approach based on the composition of web services. A web service is
a software component [5] which allows the execution of queries expressed by users. Some requirements may need to
combine several web services. This is what we call in the paper complex queries and the combination of web services
is called web service composition. Web services composition is a process that consists in gathering a set of simpler
web services into a single composite service. The notion of Web services composition has been defined in different
ways throughout the literature [6], [7], [8]. According to [9], there are two categories of web service composition:
static and dynamic. In the case of static web service composition [10], the requester must firstly define the simple web
services which are part of the composition, as well as their execution order. For the case of dynamic composition [11],
the web services to be composed are decided gradually during the execution of the user's request. Our work is based
on dynamic web service composition. Several approaches for dynamic composition of web services have been
suggested in the literature [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]. Among these methods, we are going to start from the method
proposed by [16] which uses the MiniCon algorithm for rewriting relational queries. The MiniCon algorithm does not
use a semantic module in the rewriting. Thus, we propose to use a global domain ontology to integrate the semantic
aspect in the query rewriting. This ontology is the mediator ontology [4] created by the merging local HIS ontologies.
An ontology as described by [17] is a "Conceptualization" or "abstraction" made of a particular domain to determine
the relevant concepts for its description in order to make inferences on this domain. It is also a structured modeling of
knowledge in order to facilitate the sharing and reuse of this knowledge in a given domain. Therefore, an ontology
could be used for integration tasks because of its potential to describe the semantics of information sources [18], [19].
Also we note that different computer applications nowadays use ontologies as domain model. This use of ontologies
will allow the management of many problems such as interoperability, integration and sharing of data, the semantic
web. Our approach uses the mediator ontology to enrich the users query and the MiniCon algorithm to create a
composite web service. The composite web service is executed to return the requested data.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: In section 2 called method, we pre-sent the approach we have adopted
and the detailed description of the approach. In section 3, we position our work in relation to other works through a
discussion. Finally, in section 4, we conclude and present the perspectives of our work.

2. Methods

2.1. Approach description

The implementation details of our semantic interoperability approach based on web services composition are
depicted in (Fig. 1).
The different stages of the execution of a complex request are described as follows: We assume that a nursing staff
of a hospital A wants to know a patient's medical history as well as the costs related to his care which are performed
in hospital B. We assume that hospitals A and B each have an HIS and are interconnected and each patient has a unique
identifier. (1) the nursing staff expresses his need in the form of a query; (2) the query is executed using the SPARQL
 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168 1163
Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 3

(SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) [20] language on the global ontology of the mediator. The query will
thus be semantically enriched with terms used in the different HIS applications. The enrichment will consist in
searching for all the terms used in all the HIS applications that allow to answer the doctor's query. These terms are the
elements of the global ontology created by merging the local ontologies of the HIS. The local ontologies are created
from the HIS databases. The SPARQL language is, on the one hand, a protocol and a query language that allows access
to RDF data. The main function of SPARQL is simply to take descriptions of the application's requirements, in the
form of a query, and return the result as an RDF graph. Furthermore, it can be used to express queries on different data
sources and retrieve them without needing to know the structure and content of the information in advance [21]. (3) A
rewriting module based on the MiniCon algorithm is used to create a composite web service that allows to execute the
enriched query. The rewriting is done in two phases described in [12]. The first phase consists in identifying the web
services that can be combined to answer the enriched request. This phase is called in MiniCon the construction of
MiniCon Descriptions (MCDs). Each MCD covers a need of the main query. The second phase consists in combining
all the MCDs to obtain a rewriting of the query. MiniCon realizes this combination through conjunctive rewritings of
MCDs. This conjunction is obtained from the presence of common parameters linking one MCD to another. This
operation allows to obtain sets of rewritings called Candidate Set. In order to obtain the final rewriting of the query,
the algorithm performs a union of all candidate sets. This request will be executed according to a condition. If a
composite web service is generated to execute the request, then we go to step (4) otherwise to step (5); (4) execute the
composite web service; (5) request the creation of a web service for the request; (6) return the requested data to the
nursing staff.
1164 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168
4 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

Fig. 1. Architecture Approach to HIS interoperability based on the composition of services between two hospitals A and B.

2.2. The algorithm of our approach

The approach will be implemented by the MiniConSIH algorithm. This algorithm will need as input the global
ontology of the mediator and the local services at the HIS level. It will also use the MiniCon web service as a function.
Below is the syntax of the algorithm between two hospitals A and B.
begin
the nursing staff makes a request from hospital A;
the query is enriched by running it on the general ontology using the SPARQL language;
the mediator web service uses a query rewriting module with MiniCon on the local web services of
hospital B to select the web services that can be combined to answer the query;
if a composite web service is generated then
the generated web service is executed;
the result data is returned to the doctor;
else
request Hospital B to create a web service for the query;
 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168 1165
Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 5

end if
End.

2.3. Illustration of the approach

We describe a scenario of exchange between the hospital information systems of two hospitals A and B through
web services subsequent a question asked by a nursing staff. we assuming that the nursing staff expresses his need in
a query format named Q
Q: "Gives all the Health analysis of 'P200', as well as the results related to its analysis that have been performed on
the patient in hospital A".
The mediator will then analyze the request and make a composition of web services through the various published
HIS A web services in order to choose the web services able to answer the request.

• Pre-requisites
Consider say that two hospitals A and B have respectively hospital information systems HIS A and HIS B
interconnected through a secure network and each patient has a unique identifier.
The HIS A uses a MySQL database and has the following web services:

Table 1. HIS A web services

Services Functionalities
WSPat allows for the exchange of patient data
WSExam allows you to have the different examinations of a patient
WSCons allows to know the different consultations of a patient
WSAnMed allows you to send back information about a patient's medical history
WSResul allows to exchange all the results of a patient
WSResulExam allows to know the result of a given examination of a patient
The HIS B uses a PostgreSQL database and has the following web services:

Table 2. HIS B web services

Services Functionalities
WSTrPatient allows you to return information on the treatment of patients
WSHospPatient allows you to return all the hospitalizations of a patient
WSExaPatient allows to return the different examinations of a patient
WSConsPatient allows to know the list of consultations of a patient

A global ontology is created by merging the local ontologies of the HIS A and B.

Table 3. Ontology A and Ontology B

Ontology A Ontology B
1166 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168
6 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000

A local ontology A is generated from database of A

A local ontology B is generated from database of B

• Use case description

1. A nursing staff expresses his need in natural language in a query Q format in his hospital information system HIS
B, which analyzis the query, then sends it to the mediator.
2. The query is executed, using the SPARQL language on the global ontology of the mediator, it will thus be
semantically enriched with the terms used in the HIS A and HIS B applications. The query Q is enriched with
new terms. Thus we have the keywords: 'P200' which is extended to Patient, 'Medical Analysis' which is
extended to Medical Exams, 'Analysis Results' extended to Exam Result
3. The enriched query is sent to the MiniCon module for rewriting. MiniCon then decomposes the query into
keywords. Then it browses the web services of hospital A to look for matches: P200 with WSPat, medical
analysis with WSExam, and analysis results with WSResulExam.
4. Thanks to the combination of WSPat, WSExam and WSResul. The composite web service is generated and
executed in hospital A.
5. The requested data is sent to a nursing staff.
 Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 219 (2023) 1161–1168 1167
Lydie Simone KONE/TAPSOBA et al. / Procedia Computer Science 00 (2019) 000–000 7

3. Discussion

The use of ontologies in HIS interoperability based on service composition solves the problem of semantic
heterogeneity. They help to facilitate the understanding and interpretation of information exchanged between different
HIS. Moreover, the ontology will remove any ambiguity in the description of the domain knowledge. In addition, the
use of ontology facilitates the interoperability between heterogeneous information systems by allowing the modeling,
the reusability of knowledge (terms as well as rules) that the systems must share. In other words, the ontology plays
the role of an exchange format, where it lists all the terms that must be exchanged by the applications. It also facilitates
communication and collaboration between different information systems.
The ontology is composed of a set of concepts linked by semantic relations, the idea is to extract from the ontology
the set of concepts that represents the domain searched by the doctor. During a service composition, their use also
allows to enrich the request and to make mapping with other data to be able to find a composite web service to execute
to meet the doctor's request. If we carry out a service composition without using ontologies, the query will not be
enriched and we will have queries that will not return sufficiently important answers. Therefore, if semantics is
considered in a service composition, the returned answers are much more important than when only the syntactic
description is used.

4. Conclusion and future works

In this paper, we have proposed a HIS semantic interoperability approach which is based on dynamic web services
composition. It uses our system's mediator, global ontology to enrich queries in order to integrate semantics. This
semantic interoperability allows two hospitals to exchange data among them. The mediator web service, uses a
rewriting module based on MiniCon algorithm to create a composite web service. The composite web service is
executed to return the requested data.
In future work, we plan to improve our approach to query execution time by integrating a cache system, which will
store composite web services and requirements. So if an enriched request arrives in the system, the mediator web
service will consult the cache. If it finds a composite service that can answer the request, then it executes this without
having to go through the rewriting process with MiniCon.
Also, we will give details on generating local ontologies from the HIS databases and merging these local ontologies
to get the global ontology of our system mediator. Finally, we will implement this approach.

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