A. Anil Sinaci

The title of my PhD dissertation is Data Interoperability Through Federated Semantic Metadata Registries. During my PhD studies, I designed and implemented a novel interoperability architecture based on the concept of Common Data Elements while utilizing the semantic web technologies and Linked Data principles.

Data interoperability is a hindering challenge for many domains as such in eHealth and eBusiness applications where valuable data is kept in different silos and applications try to make use of those disparate datasets for various use-cases. Associated IT communities are trying to find new ways for interoperability and publishing domain-specific Common Data Elements is one of those abstract solutions to alleviate the pain: defining abstract metadata definitions for data items to be exchanged or collaboratively processed. I proposed a solution for this problem of data interoperability based on federated use of metadata registries utilizing Semantic Web and Linked Data technologies. My related publication received 67 citations so far.

I pursued my work under great coordination of my lovely supervisor, Prof. Dr. Nihan Kesim Cicekli. My studies led to the development of a new profile, named Data Element Exchange, under Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise. Later on, based on this idea, I co-authored a new ISO/IEC standard.

The title of my MSc thesis is A Conformance and Interoperability Test Suite For Turkey's National Health Information System and An Interactive Test Control and Monitoring Environment. The first version of Turkey's National Health Information System (NHIS) was based on HL7 standards. Clients such as the hospital information systems continuously submitted medical data through this system to the central web services. During my masters studies, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Asuman Dogac, I built a testing environment so that the clients can test themselves in terms of conformance and interoperability with respect to the standards used in various layers of the web service communication.

During my undergraduate education, in addition to the core/must courses of the department on Data Structures, Algorithms, Programming Language Concepts, Operating Systems etc., I took several technical elective courses such as Artificial Intelligence, Language Processors, Database Management Systems and Introduction to Bioinformatics. I will always remember the programming assignments, group projects and long and sleepless nights at the laboratories.

From age 11 to 18, more than 7 years at the beautiful campus of my high school by the sea side. Lots of memories, I grew up there...