Research Terminologies Australia (Rosetta)
Channel: Australian Research Data Commons - ARDC
Date: 05/12/2022

Recorded:  15/11/2022
Presenter:  Douglas R. Boyle - University of Melbourne - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4779-7083
Authors:
 - Douglas R. Boyle - University of Melbourne - https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4779-7083
 - Michael Lawley - CSIRO - https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9508-4769
 - Rowan Brownlee - ARDC -  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1955-1262

In many domains, multiple languages, vocabularies, or terminologies are utilized to describe the same thing. Mapping between definitions can be complex and open to differences in opinion and human error. In 196 BC, King Ptolemy V Epiphanes commissioned the ‘Rosetta Stone’1 – a stele inscribed with a decree written in three languages – Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic, and Greek script. This stele became the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Rosetta Stone is the inspiration for a new initiative called Research Terminologies Australia or ‘RoseTtA’ for short. A collaboration between the ARDC, The University of Melbourne, CSIRO and the Australian Health Research Alliance, our version of Rosetta aims to help curate mappings between terminologies commonly utilized in health and related domains.

In the health domain, we do have standards such as 'SNOMED Clinical Terms'. Unfortunately, many systems do not conform to this or indeed any standard. In many cases, text is manually entered rather than coded. Mappings between terminologies or even simple concepts such as ‘Sex’ and its representation are ad-hoc and subject to human error. Rosetta aims to build on the internationally leading health terminology server technologies ‘Ontoserver’2 and ‘Snap2SNOMED’3 to build a tool that allows for open community curation of clinical terminology mappings, mappings of concepts such as ‘Sex’ across custom database implementations and that supports mappings of free text terms to discrete medical concepts.

Rosetta aims to complement Research Vocabularies Australia and to participate towards harmonization in the vocabulary and terminology space. This presentation will introduce the background to Rosetta, will describe Ontoserver and Snap2SNOMED and will set the context from the perspective of the ARDC.

Acknowledgements:
Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)

References
1. The Rosetta Stone - Wikipedia. Available online: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone (accessed on 3 December 2022)
2. Metke-Jimenez, A., Steel, J., Hansen, D. et al. Ontoserver: a syndicated terminology server. J Biomed Semant 9, 24 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13326-018-0191-z
3. SNOMED International. Snap2SNOMED. Available online: https://snap.snomedtools.org/  (accessed on 3 December 2022)