The document discusses the National Innovation Centre (NIC) in the UK, which aims to speed up innovation in healthcare technology for the NHS and UK economy. The NIC uses linked data, ontologies, and semantic web technologies like RDFa to create a platform for publishing and connecting health innovation data from various sources. This platform includes tools for visualizing and searching the data to help identify opportunities for collaboration and development.

1. Monitoring Healthcare
Innovation: A Case Study in
Using OWL, Linked Data and
RDFa
Dr. Michael Wilkinson, NIC
Mark Birbeck, Backplane Ltd.
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2. About the National Health
Service
Established in 1948
Comprehensive, universal, free at point of delivery
World’s largest health service
Covers entire population of 51 million
Serves, on average,1 million people every 36 hours
World’s 4th largest employer
1.7m people employed, including:
120,000 hospital doctors
40,000 general practitioners (GPs)
400,000 nurses
25,000 ambulance staff
55,000 scientists
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3. UK Research Environment
UK Life Science Industry
Employs over 120,000 people
Invests more than £4.6 billion in R&D
Global turnover more than £31.4 billion
World University Rankings
1: Harvard University
2: University of Cambridge
3: Yale University
4: University College London
5=: Imperial College London
5=: University of Oxford
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4. Who we are
Funded by Department of Health
Response to Industry’s complaint to Government that
NHS was unresponsive to innovation
In current economic climate, Government, NHS and
Industry all see innovation as a key driver to:
improve NHS
productivity
quality
support UK plc
wealth and job creation
inward investment and export trade
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5. What we do
We aim to speed-up the development and delivery of
technological innovations likely to benefit the NHS and
UK plc
We focus on:
Pre-commercial innovation (e.g., SBRI, Collaborative, Classic)
Linked Data
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6. Competition Tool

7. Competition Tool
NIC Define Design Develop Demonstrate Distribute

8. Competition Tool
NIC Define Design Develop Demonstrate Distribute
Competition
Tool

9. Competition Tool
NIC Define Design Develop Demonstrate Distribute
SBRI
AUCTIONS
Prizes
Competition
Std Tenders
Tool Grants
Negotiated
Collaborations
procedures

10. Competition Tool
NIC Define Design Develop Demonstrate Distribute
SBRI
AUCTIONS
Prizes
Competition
Std Tenders
Tool Grants
Negotiated
Collaborations
procedures
Need 1 Need 2 Need 3 Need 4 Need 5

11. Screen Shot
Competition Tool
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13. Screen Shots
Showcase Tool
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18. Linked Data Platform
Ontology
Linked data
Triple-store
Applications
Architecture
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19. Platform: Ontology
Open Health Innovation Ontology (OHIO) Developed by
the NIC
Spans the entire innovation pipeline
Models concepts and relationships within the domain of
innovation
Builds on existing ontologies, such as FOAF and DC
Extremely modular
TDD approach (using Pellet)
Comprises both OWL (Web Ontology Language) and
SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System)
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20. Platform: Linked data
Sources listed on data.gov.uk
Unstructured, such as PubMed
Semi-structured, such as Connecting for Health CSV files
Structured, using RDFa:
Partner with others, such as the Chief Scientist's Office...
...and NHS Networks
Some data is entered manually, and augmented (e.g.,
with geocoding and entity extraction)
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21. Direct sources: data.gov.uk
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22. ...although mainly spreadsheets
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23. Unstructured: PubMed
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24. Semi-structured: CfH CSV files
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25. Semi-structured: CfH CSV files
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26. Augmentation: Geo and OpenCalais
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27. Augmentation: Geo and OpenCalais
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28. Platform: Triple-store
Key part of the architecture
Driven by the OHIO ontology
Publicly available via SPARQL end-point
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29. Platform: Applications
Many ways to visualise and understand the data, so no
'one size fits all'
Open source community offers plethora of tools to help:
MIT's Exhibit
Google Visualizations API
So build a widget platform:
Find and link to data
Create widgets to visualise the data
Embed those in your own site
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30. Visualisation: Exhibit
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31. Visualisation: GViz
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32. Platform: Applications
Many ways to visualise and understand the data
Open Source community offers plethora of tools to
exploit, such as:
MIT's Exhibit
Google Visualizations API
Widget platform:
Find and upload data
Create widgets to visualise the data
Embedded in their own sites
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33. Platform: Architecture
Search is provided by Solr
Nutch does the crawling
Triple-store is 4Store
Management of the platform is via Drupal
Drupal also provides the user interface layer:
Views
Google Visualizations API
Exhibit
Faceted browsing (from Solr)
Embedding widgets
User registration
Ratings
Comments
Forums......could go on and on! 27

34. Well-known CMS with strong community;
good foundation for pretty much anything;
increasing number of semantic modules:
Open Calais support;
RDF import;
import results of SPARQL queries;
RDF to Apache Solr mapping;
RDFa support in core in Drupal 7;
still on Drupal 6 though (many unported modules);
manages our system, and provides end-user UI.
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35. part of Lucene project at Apache;
full-text search;
'more like this';
'did you mean?';
hit highlighting;
faceted search;
rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling;
...and well integrated with Drupal.
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36. part of Lucene project at Apache;
crawler (managing links and schedules);
parsers for HTML and other document formats (e.g.,
Word, PDF);
a Drupal module is available.
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37. basic triple-store;
SPARQL over HTTP.
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38. dataShuttle
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39. Faceted search: Product
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40. Faceted search: Product
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41. Faceted search: Indicator
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42. Faceted search: Indicator
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43. Embed widget
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44. Widget in place: Community site
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45. Widget in place: Hospital homepage
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46. Widget in place: Hospital homepage
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47. Next steps
Release OHIO as open source ontology
Launch dataShuttle beta
Establish more RDFa publishing partners
Crawl more specialist sites
NLP on some sites (probably with GATE or Mahout)
Take platform open source so that others can get up and
running quickly
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48. Links
Dr. Michael Wilkinson:
michael.wilkinson@institute.nhs.uk
http://www.nic.nhs.uk/
Mark Birbeck
mark.birbeck@webBackplane.com
http://webBackplane.com/mark.birbeck
Tools
Exhibit: http://www.simile-widgets.org/exhibit/
GViz: http://code.google.com/apis/charttools/index.html
Solr: http://lucene.apache.org/solr/
Nutch: http://nutch.apache.org/
4Store: http://4store.org/
Drupal: http://drupal.org/
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