How to provide semantic capability to support the Australian population in their time of need? Find out how Healthdirect Australia makes use of semantic technologies to improve findability on its information portal. Main challenges: - multiple websites that draw their content from multiple sources and are published across multiple devices. - the "healthcare" domain is a confusing topic for many, filled with Latin names for diseases and industry jargon making it difficult for people to access and understand information - accurate, automatic content classification - support the publishing workflow for both edited and harvested/ingested/syndicated content

1. The Healthdirect Australia Story
James Humffray
Development of a semantic framework to support the
Australian population in their time of need
Florian Huber

2. Contents
What is Healthdirect Australia?
What issues do we want solved?
Semantic and content platform
Australian Health Thesaurus (AHT)
Benefits of AHT
Future directions

3. Healthdirect Australia
Ensuring all Australians have access to the right
advice on the appropriate care for their health issue
when they need it and where they need it.

4. The issue
How to ensure all Australians have access to the right advice on the appropriate
care for their health issue when they need it and where they need it.
How to provide semantic capability to support the Australian population in their time of
need?

5. Semantic and content platform
The main challenges were:
• Multiple websites that draw their content from multiple sources
and are published across multiple devices.
• The "healthcare" domain is a confusing topic for many, filled
with Latin names for diseases and industry jargon making it
difficult for people to access and understand information
• Accurate, automatic content classification
• Support the publishing workflow for both edited and
harvested/ingested/syndicated content

6. Content platform

7. Enterprise Server
Used components:
PoolParty Thesaurus Server (PPT)
● Vocabulary server to manage taxonomies and thesauri
● Use, manage and publish linked data and large enterprise
knowledge graphs
● Based on standardized linked data technologies
PoolParty Extractor (PPX)
● Scalable, high availability
● Powerful entity extractor and text mining service
PoolParty API
● Fast and unsophisticated integration into enterprise systems

8. Development of the Australian Health Thesaurus
• Department of Health Thesaurus
• Local thesauri/taxonomies
• Symptom Check
• International thesauri/taxonomies
• MeSH
• DSM-V
• ICD10
• Common search terms (Google
Analytics)
• Search terms with no results
(Hitwise)
• Across health information industry
• Ongoing maintenance
Over 5000 changes since Feb 2014

9. Information Partnership
• Currently 120 information partners
▪ Peak bodies
▪ Government agencies
▪ Specialist health organisations
▪ General health organisations
• Healthdirect currently has 25,000 content links

10. Content publication process

11. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Improves search for users
Search on “orbital
neoplasm”
returns results on
“eye cancer”

12. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Display related or similar content

13. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Provide filters to narrow search
Used for Auto-suggestion

14. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Concepts mapped to Lifestage facet

15. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Concepts mapped to relevant videos

16. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Concepts mapped to promotable websites

17. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Concepts mapped to relevant information partner display

18. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Classification applied to images, using third-party DAM tool

19. Benefits of AHT
How we are using PoolParty
Classification mapped to a Symptom Checker flow

20. Benefits of AHT
Summary
Australian Health Thesaurus (AHT) and PoolParty are integral
to our search and content management strategy!

21. Requirements and challenges
• Conversion of taxonomies: transformation of AHT to SKOS,
linking AHT and MeSH.
• Semantic search: dealing with semantic concepts as part of
indexing and search applications built on Solr.
• Staging architecture: provide separated development and
production environments for thesaurus management and
usage. Mastering the synchronization of environments.
• High availability of services: guarantee high availability of
knowledge models for production environment.
• Continuous integration of services: integration of PoolParty
components in the sophisticated continuous integration
workflow of Healthdirect.

22. Conversion of taxonomies

23. Using the knowledge graph for semantic
search
… use the
relationships
… use the labels

24. Staging architecture

25. High availability of Extraction services

26. Future directions
Using classifications to determine publishing channel
Healthdirect
PregnancyBirthBaby
MindHealthConnect
MyAgedCare
Others as required

27. Future directions
Linking to other thesauri
● Australian Pictorial Thesaurus (APT)
● Australian Medicines Terminology (AMT)
● SNOMED-CT-AU

28. Future directions – Visualisations- Tag clouds

29. Future directions - new information model

30. Future directions - LOD

31. Future directions – Visualisations

32. Thank you
Questions?

33. Contact
James Humffray
james.humffray@healthdirect.org.au
http://au.linkedin.com/pub/james-humffray/7/9b/9bb
Florian Huber
f.huber@semantic-web.at
http://at.linkedin.com/pub/florian-huber/68/6b3/b63/