ReDD-Observatory: Using the Web of Data for Evaluating the Research-Disease Disparity

Abstract

It is widely accepted that there is a large disparity between the availability of treatment options and the prevalence of diseases all over the world, thus placing individuals in danger. This disparity is partially caused by the restricted access to information that would allow health care and research policy makers to formulate more appropriate measures to mitigate it. Specifically, this shortage of information is caused by the difficulty in reliably obtaining and integrating data regarding the disease burden and the respective research investments. In response to these challenges, the Linked Data paradigm provides a simple mechanism for publishing and interlinking structured information on the Web. In conjunction with the ever increasing data on diseases and health care research available as Linked Data, an opportunity is created to reduce this information gap that would allow for better policy in response to these disparities. In this paper, we present the ReDD-Observatory, an approach for evaluating the Research-Disease Disparity based on the interlinking and integrating of various biomedical data sources. Specifically, we devise a method for representing statistical information as Linked Data and adopt interlinking algorithms for integrating relevant datasets (mainly GHO, Linked CT and PubMed). The assessment of the disparity is then performed with a number of parametrized SPARQL queries on the integrated data substrate. As a consequence, we are for the first time able to provide reliable indicators for the extent of the research-disease disparity in a semi-automated fashion, thus enabling health care professionals and policy makers to make more informed decisions.