Interfacing the Real World

The desideratum of semantic interoperability has been intensively discussed in medical informatics circles in recent years. Originally it was assumed by many that this issue could be addressed simply by insisting on the application of shared clinical terminologies. More recently however the use of the term ‘ontology’ has been steadily growing. We here address the issue of the degree to which the use of ontologies represents any real advance on the road to semantic interoperability.