Publishing Chinese medicine knowledge as Linked Data on the Web

Abstract

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chinese medicine (CM) draws growing attention from Western healthcare practitioners and patients. However, the integration of CM knowledge and Western medicine (WM) has been hindered by a barrier of languages and cultures as well as a lack of scientific evidence for CM's efficacy and safety. In addition, most of CM knowledge published with relational database technology makes the integration of databases even more challenging.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Linked Data approach was used in publishing CM knowledge. This approach was applied to publishing a CM linked dataset, namely RDF-TCM <url>http://www.open-biomed.org.uk/rdf-tcm/</url> based on TCMGeneDIT, which provided association information about CM in English.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The Linked Data approach made CM knowledge accessible through standards-compliant interfaces to facilitate the bridging of CM and WM. The open and programmatically-accessible RDF-TCM facilitated the creation of new data mash-up and novel federated query applications.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Publishing CM knowledge in Linked Data provides a point of departure for integration of CM databases.</p