Using Semantic Web technology to support icd-11 textual definitions authoring

The beta phase of the 11(th) revision of International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) intends to accept public input through a distributed model of authoring. One of the core use cases is to create textual definitions for the ICD categories. The objective of the present study is to design, develop, and evaluate approaches to support ICD-11 textual definitions authoring using Semantic Web technology. We investigated a number of heterogeneous resources related to the definitions of diseases, including the linked open data (LOD) from DBpedia, the textual definitions from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) and the formal definitions of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). We integrated them in a Semantic Web framework (i.e., the Linked Data in a Resource Description Framework [RDF] triple store), which is being proposed as a backend in a prototype platform for collaborative authoring of ICD-11 beta. We performed a preliminary evaluation on the usefulness of our approaches and discussed the potential challenges from both technical and clinical perspectives.