Re: Opening Walled Gardens: RDF / Linked Data as the Universal Exchange Language of Healthcare

Hi, and thanks for your comments!

On Tue, 2013-01-15 at 12:58 +0000, RebholzSchuhmann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> don't know how someone reads this, who does not know all these benefits 
> anyways. Reads as if you are selling RDF to somebody who knows half-way 
> the benefits of RDF.

Yes, we decided that we simply didn't have time to write a long document
that more fully explained the benefits.  (And actually, I'm not sure
that would have been effective anyway, as people usually need to see new
ideas multiple times before they understand them.)  We don't expect this
one comment to change anyone's mind, but our hope is that it will get
people to start looking in this direction.

> It would have made sense to be more precise on the privacy and security 
> issues. 

Good point, since that's such a fear-inducing topic. 

> Neither RDF nor XML have been developed to address privacy / 
> security, and either one is highly important in healthcare systems.  Do 
> you have even stronger arguments for privacy and security issues?

Not really.  The main argument is that the same techniques that are
currently being used can still be used.  Privacy and security issues are
orthogonal to information representation choices, or at least they
should be.  One could make arguments about the potential for using RDF
to reason about access permissions, but I think that would be somewhat
specious, because RDF could be used for that purpose even if the
information representation language were not RDF.

Perhaps one security argument we could make is that RDF reduces
complexity, by providing a uniform information representation language,
and as we all know, complexity reduces security because it increases
vulnerabilities.  But I don't think that's a particularly strong
argument either.

Do you have any ideas about privacy and security with respect to RDF?

David

> 
> Hope this helps.
> 
>      -drs-
> 
> On 15/01/2013 12:41, Joanne Luciano wrote:
> > Thanks for doing this.
> > Joanne
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> > On Jan 15, 2013, at 7:21 AM, David Booth<david@dbooth.org>  wrote:
> >
> >> FYI, here is the comment that Rafael, Michel, Conor and I submitted to
> >> the US government Office of the National Coordinator for Health
> >> Information Technology, in response to their RFC on "Meaningful Use"
> >> requirements, proposing RDF / Linked Data as a universal exchange
> >> language of healthcare:
> >> http://dbooth.org/2013/mu/MU-Stage3-RFC-Simple-Response.pdf
> >>
> >> Although it is too late to change that submitted comment (as the
> >> deadline was last night), we would still appreciate any feedback or
> >> suggestions for improvement, as I'm sure we will have to make these
> >> arguments and explanations many more times in the future.
> >>
> >> Thanks!
> >>
> >> -- 
> >> David Booth, Ph.D.
> >> http://dbooth.org/
> >>
> >> Loss of web prodigy Aaron Swartz: http://tinyurl.com/ahe2k8c
> >>
> >> Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
> >> reflect those of his employer.
> >>
> >>
> 

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Loss of web prodigy Aaron Swartz: http://tinyurl.com/ahe2k8c

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Tuesday, 15 January 2013 14:34:58 UTC