Background: In the range of Semantic Web, the idea of linking and sharing the resources generated by different authors, like ontologies, knowledge bases, or datasets, is referred to “Linked data”. Then, an ambitious project within the “Linked Data” paradigm is the “Linking Open Data” community project. It aims at publishing open data sets on the Web and semantically connecting data items belonging to different data sources. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to present a literature review on the subject of Linked Open Data in Health and Clinical Care. In fact, the availability of open data would increase evidence of the results of biomedical research, and consequently, of clinical practice. Methods: Selection criteria have been defined and searching in PubMed/Medline and Scopus citation databases - for all years the database were available - journals papers have been retrieved. Finally, an evaluation grid has been defined for analysing the retrieved papers, to answer some defined research questions. Results: Nine journal articles have been analysed according to the defined evaluation grid. In five out of nine papers, the main contributions are strategies and methodologies for the integration of systems, including bridging the information gap among forms for clinical research and the one for patient care. Then, in three papers the main contributions are the development of consistent triple stores according to the “Linked Data” paradigm. Finally, the last paper aims at building an open dataset for public health purposes. Conclusions: The review was able to answer the research questions, despite the limited number of included papers.

Health Informatics Centre Department of Learning Informatics Management and Ethics Karolinska Institutet Stockholm Sweden

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