Our 3rd solutions focus area for the Intelligent Healthcare Practice is something we call "Semantic Integration." Semantics represents a new and exciting solution approach to enhance and empower current data solutions with new capabilities including:

• Structured & Unstructured data fusion
• Improved data / knowledge discovery
• Community-wide collaboration & decision-making
• Improvements in data integrity and solution efficiencies
• Reduced cost and time necessary to achieve new levels of interoperability

Why Semantics are Important

What do databases, program logic, business process and program management all have in common? All of these elements within a single enterprise should share the same set of terminology and conventions. There ought to be a shared, unifying foundation that logically binds all of these pieces together into one common picture. This is seldom the case, though, and that fact is one of the primary reasons why systems integration has traditionally been so costly, time consuming and ultimately unsuccessful. There is though a practice area emerging specifically to deal with what may likely be the most pivotal of all enterprise technologies – this new practice is Semantic Integration. The question is whether or not we have a near-term window for employing a new approach to data interoperability for the Healthcare arena.

Technology alone does not solve problems in itself. People solve problems by leveraging the appropriate technologies within the context of communities of practice. Those communities of practice involve the utilization of one or methodologies that have been tailored to suit the needs of the community, the problem space and the related technologies involved. It is important to keep this in mind as most of the expectation disconnects that occur around IT projects tend to be based upon the promise or potential of a particular technology before the appropriate community of practice has been established.