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Background There is a variety of libre/free and open-source software (LIFOSS) products for medicine and health care. To support health care and IT professionals select an appropriate software product for given tasks, several comparison studies and web platforms, such as Medfloss.org, are available. However, due to the lack of a uniform terminology for health informatics, ambiguous or imprecise terms are used to describe the functionalities of LIFOSS. This makes comparisons of LIFOSS difficult and may lead to inappropriate software selection decisions. Using Linked Open Data (LOD) promises to address these challenges. Objective We describe LIFOSS systematically with the help of the underlying Health Information Technology Ontology (HITO). We publish HITO and HITO-based software product descriptions using LOD to obtain the following benefits: (1) linking and reusing existing terminologies and (2) using Semantic Web tools for viewing and querying the LIFOSS data on the World Wide Web. Methods HITO was incrementally developed and implemented. First, classes for the description of software products in health IT evaluation studies were identified. Second, requirements for describing LIFOSS were elicited by interviewing domain experts. Third, to describe domain-specific functionalities of software products, existing catalogues of features and enterprise functions were analyzed and integrated into the HITO knowledge base. As a proof of concept, HITO was used to describe 25 LIFOSS products. Results HITO provides a defined set of classes and their relationships to describe LIFOSS in medicine and health care. With the help of linked or integrated catalogues for languages, programming languages, licenses, features, and enterprise functions, the functionalities of LIFOSS can be precisely described and compared. We publish HITO and the LIFOSS descriptions as LOD; they can be queried and viewed using different Semantic Web tools, such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) browsers, SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) queries, and faceted searches. The advantages of providing HITO as LOD are demonstrated by practical examples. Conclusions HITO is a building block to achieving unambiguous communication among health IT professionals and researchers. Providing LIFOSS product information as LOD enables barrier-free and easy access to data that are often hidden in user manuals of software products or are not available at all. Efforts to establish a unique terminology of medical and health informatics should be further supported and continued.

BACKGROUND There is a variety of Libre/Free and Open Source Software (LIFOSS) products for medicine and healthcare. To support health care and IT professionals in selecting an appropriate software product for given tasks, several comparison studies and web platforms such as MEDFLOSS.org are available. However, due to the lack of a uniform terminology of health informatics, ambiguous or imprecise terms are used to describe functionalities of LIFOSS. This makes comparisons of LIFOSS difficult and may lead to inappropriate software selection decisions. Using Linked Open Data promises to address these challenges. OBJECTIVE We describe LIFOSS systematically with the help of an underlying health IT ontology (HITO). We publish HITO and HITO-based software product descriptions using Linked Open Data to obtain the following benefits: (1) Linking and reusing existing terminologies, and (2) using semantic web tools for viewing and querying the LIFOSS data in the world wide web. METHODS HITO is incrementally developed and implemented. First, classes for the description of software products in health IT evaluation studies were identified. Second, requirements for describing LIFOSS were elicited by interviewing the platform operators of the internet platform medfloss.org. Third, for describing domain-specific functionalities of software products, existing catalogues of features and enterprise functions were analyzed and integrated into the HITO knowledge base. Finally, to validate the resulting ontology and catalogues, HITO was used to describe 25 LIFOSS products. RESULTS HITO provides a defined set of classes and their relationships to describe LIFOSS in medicine and healthcare. With the help of linked or integrated catalogues for languages, programming languages, licenses, features and enterprise functions, the functionalities of LIFOSS can be precisely described and compared. We publish HITO and the LIFOSS descriptions as Linked Open Data, they can therefore be queried and viewed using different semantic web tools such as an RDF browser, SPARQL queries and faceted search. The advantages of providing HITO as linked open data are demonstrated by practical examples. CONCLUSIONS HITO supports unambiguous communication among health IT professionals and researchers. Providing LIFOSS product information as linked open data enables barrier-free and easy access to data which is often hidden in user manuals of software products or even not available at all. Efforts of establishing a unique terminology of medical and health informatics should be further supported and continued.