From the HITOP mission statement introduction:
The Health Information Technology Ontology Project (HITOP) Work Group is a federal group that will make recommendations for systematically improving healthcare while reducing healthcare cost. Achievement of semantic interoperability through the use of ontology software in high priority health IT projects will both save money and improve the quality of care.
From the local level, to the Regional Health Information Organization level, to the level of states and provinces to the national and international levels, the importance of developing and/or adopting healthcare standards for electronic digital healthcare informatiion systems cannot be overestimated. ...