Building Bridges in Health and Environment: How ODH-Unified Terminology empowers OneAquaHealth’s Vision for a Sustainable Future
The One Digital Health Unified Terminology (ODH-UT) is a pioneering effort designed to standardize communication within the One Digital Health (ODH) ecosystem by establishing a shared vocabulary [1]. This development addresses the communication challenges inherent in ODH, a framework that merges Digital Health and One Health principles, emphasizing the interconnected health of humans, animals, and the environment. ODH provides a digital perspective on ecosystem health, societal well-being, and animal welfare through a unified framework intended to support holistic, sustainable health strategies [2].
The ODH-UT project has become an essential element for the OneAquaHealth project. With OneAquaHealth’s mission focused on safeguarding urban freshwater ecosystems and enhancing human well-being, ODH-UT supports this by ensuring standardized language and terminology across diverse disciplines. This unified vocabulary enables more effective monitoring, research, and communication around the ecological and human health indicators that OneAquaHealth seeks to track. By enabling clarity and consistency, ODH-UT fosters collaboration among healthcare professionals, environmental scientists, and technologists working within OneAquaHealth’s framework.
One Digital Health-Steering Wheel (ODH-SW) model plays a crucial role in ODH-UT by providing the foundational structure. The Steering Wheel model outlines key components such as individual health, population health, and ecosystem health, with corresponding terminology definitions and synonyms tailored for interdisciplinary use. Through this structure, ODH-UT bridges terminological gaps, enabling multidisciplinary teams to share data and insights more effectively, thus empowering the OneAquaHealth project to identify early warning indicators for ecosystem health and respond proactively to emerging environmental health threats.
In addition to enhancing ODH and OneAquaHealth projects, ODH-UT paves the way for future applications in knowledge management and decision-making tools across healthcare and environmental sectors. Through its alignment with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), the terminology also integrates into other frameworks and systems, allowing for wider usage and global collaboration [3]. As a part of the MIMO multilingual ontology, ODH-UT supports cross-lingual capabilities and facilitates knowledge dissemination across diverse languages and cultural settings [4].
Overall, by establishing a comprehensive and standardized terminology framework, ODH-UT stands as a cornerstone for sustainable, interdisciplinary health initiatives, aligning One Digital Health’s holistic vision with OneAquaHealth’s goals of ecosystem preservation and human well-being.
Resources:
[1] Bauberg H, Nehama D, Blinder C, Davidman R, Cohen E, Tamburis O, Darmoni SJ, Grosjean J, Benis A. Initiating a One Digital Health Unified Terminology (ODH-UT) to Facilitate Community Expansion. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2024 Aug 22;316:1569-1573. doi: 10.3233/SHTI240719. PMID: 39176507.
[2] Benis A, Tamburis O, Chronaki C, Moen A, One Digital Health: A Unified Framework for Future Health Ecosystems, J Med Internet Res 2021;23(2): e22189
[3] Tamburis O, Benis A. One Digital Health for more FAIRness. Methods Inf Med. 2022 Dec;61(S 02):e116-e124. doi: 10.1055/a-1938-0533. Epub 2022 Sep 7. PMID: 36070786; PMCID: PMC9788917.
[4] Benis A, Grosjean J, Billey K, Montanha G, Dornauer V, Crișan-Vida M, Hackl WO, Stoicu-Tivadar L, Darmoni SJ. Medical informatics and digital health multilingual ontology (MIMO): A tool to improve international collaborations. Int J Med Inform. 2022 Nov;167:104860. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2022.104860. Epub 2022 Aug 29. PMID: 36084537; PMCID: PMC9582075.
Author(s): Arriel Benis, Holon Institute of Technology