Proposal of an integrated decision support system for Tuberculosis based on Semantic Web

Abstract

Epidemiological surveillance of Tuberculosis (TB) requires a strong integration of different health services, programs and levels of care. The deepening and broadening of data management techniques must be constantly carried out to increase the integrality of healthcare. Otherwise, knowledge extraction and clinical and administrative decision-making processes are significantly hampered, directly affecting the management and quality of health services. Thus, this work aims to establish a computerized decision support system capable of collecting, integrating and sharing TB health data in Brazilian Unified Public Health System. Also, it will allow the monitoring of infected patients and the visualization of consolidated information of regular TB and its resistant variants for health professionals and managers. The data will be made available from heterogeneous, disconnected and unstructured sources by combining traditional web services, Semantic Web resources and security algorithms. A solid knowledge base applied to epidemiological surveillance, health information governance and clinical support will be enabled to integrate the multiple areas of TB patients care, as well as to support the creation of more accurate operational and diagnostics models.