Personal Health Data Integration and Intelligence through Semantic Web and Blockchain Technologies
2026-03-02 • Other Computer Science
Other Computer ScienceComputers and Society
AI summaryⓘ
The authors explain that health data from personal devices is often messy and hard to combine with doctors' records because there’s no universal standard that fits the way data is spread out among different sources. They propose a solution that uses semantic web technology and blockchain to securely connect and share daily health information from various devices in a way that follows existing standards like FHIR. This system helps healthcare providers get a clearer picture of patients’ everyday health outside the clinic without relying on specific device makers or record systems.
Health AIFHIRObservations of Daily Living (ODL)Electronic Health Record (EHR)semantic webblockchainsmart contractspersonal health devicesdata integrationhealth data interoperability
Authors
Oshani Seneviratne, Manan Shukla, Jianjing Lin
Abstract
Data integration among various stakeholders in the healthcare space remains a challenge, despite the impressive advances in Health AI in the past decade. There is a lot of ``messy'' non-standard but structured data that are continually being collected from personal health devices. While efforts such as the Fast Healthcare Interoperability of Resources (FHIR) are underway in standardizing the data representation formats, there is currently a gap in the standard in addressing the health data ecosystem's decentralized nature. As we see explosive growth in chronic diseases such as diabetes, healthcare providers need Observations of Daily Living (ODL) of their patients to treat them effectively. The best way to obtain ODL is through personal health devices. However, such devices are manufactured by various device makers, and they may not follow standards or integrate with existing Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems. It is also imperative that any data sharing that happens will occur in a secure and trustworthy environment, without being too restrictive, i.e., tied to a particular EHR vendor. This paper presents a scalable solution to bridge this gap using a system that implements semantic web and blockchain technologies. Our solution uses FHIR compliant semantic web based data templates in conjunction with smart contracts on the blockchain to provide healthcare providers with insights on their patients' daily activity that cannot be readily determined solely through patient encounters at the clinic.