With the advancements of semantic web, ontology has become the crucial mechanism for representing concepts in various domains. For research and dispersal of customized healthcare services, a major challenge is to efficiently retrieve and analyze individual patient data from a large volume of heterogeneous data over a long time span. This requirement demands effective ontology-based information retrieval approaches for clinical information systems so that the pertinent information can be mined from large amount of distributed data.

This unique and groundbreaking book highlights the key advances in ontology-based information retrieval techniques being applied in the healthcare domain and covers the following areas:

• Semantic data integration in e-health care systems
• Keyword-based medical information retrieval
• Ontology-based query retrieval support for e-health implementation
• Ontologies as a database management system technology for medical information retrieval
• Information integration using contextual knowledge and ontology merging
• Collaborative ontology-based information indexing and retrieval in health informatics
• An ontology-based text mining framework for vulnerability assessment in health and social care
• An ontology-based multi-agent system for matchmaking patient healthcare monitoring
• A multi-agent system for querying heterogeneous data sources with ontologies for reducing cost of customized healthcare systems
• A methodology for ontology based multi agent systems development
• Ontology based systems for clinical systems: validity, ethics and regulation