Evidence-based healthcare ontology and Cochrane systematic Reviews - A linked data project

Hello W3C Semantic Web HCLSIG,

My name is Chris Mavergames and I'm the Director of Web Development for 
The Cochrane Collaboration (www.cochrane.org <http://www.cochrane.org> 
<http://www.cochrane.org>), an international, non-profit healthcare 
research organisation dedicated to producing systematic reviews of 
healthcare interventions and the best-available evidence for healthcare 
decision-making for clinicians, patients, policy-makers and others 
working in healthcare delivery. Our resource, The Cochrane Library 
(http://www.thecochranelibrary.com), includes the Cochrane Database of 
Systematic Reviews 
(http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/AboutTheCochraneLibrary.html#CDSR), 
with more than 5,000 systematic reviews, and CENTRAL (Cochrane Central 
Register of Controlled Trials - 
http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/AboutTheCochraneLibrary.html#CENTRAL), 
which contains nearly 700,000 records of clinical trials and studies.

About a year ago, we began exploring how we could use semantic web and 
linked data technologies to provide better links between our own 
datasets and to make our data interoperable with other datasets in the 
bio-medical domain. In this project, we made an initial, first draft 
ontology by modeling Cochrane systematic reviews (in OWL, RDFS) which 
include core concepts in evidence-based health care. Early on we 
recognized that linking studies to Reviews offered many opportunities 
and benefits but also that linking to other datasets such as Drugbank, 
one of the resources in linkedlifedata.com <http://linkedlifedata.com> 
(http://linkedlifedata.com/sources) 
<http://linkedlifedata.com/sources%29> as well as using ontologies like 
the OCRe (http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/1076) 
<http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/1076%29> could allow for 
even more possibilities in making our content more accessible, useful 
and interoperable.

More information about our project can be found in the following 2 
presentations:

http://www.slideshare.net/mavergames/linked-data-and-cochrane-reviews-12936733

http://www.slideshare.net/mavergames/sustainability-and-cochrane-reviews-how-technology-can-help-12207716 


Currently, our goal is to complete our ontology of systematic reviews 
and look to broaden it to include all the concepts in the domain and 
create an evidence-based healthcare ontology. Michel Dumontier suggested 
that perhaps the "Scientific Discourse Task Force" might be the best 
place to discuss this project. May I suggest that we arrange a call so 
that I can discuss our project in more detail with that or one of the 
other task forces?

In addition, is anyone in the HCLSIG involved in the efforts to create 
health & medical extensions to Schema.org? 
(http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/MedicalHealthProposal) 
<http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/MedicalHealthProposal%29>

Thanks, in advance, for your input.

Best regards,
Chris Mavergames

-- 

Chris Mavergames
Director of Web Development
The Cochrane Collaboration | www.cochrane.org

German Cochrane Centre/Deutsches Cochrane Zentrum
University Medical Centre Freiburg/Universitätsklinikum Freiburg
Institute for Medical Biometry and Medical Informatics/Institut für
Medizinische Biometrie und Medizinische Informatik
Berliner Allee 29
D-79110 Freiburg GERMANY
+49(0)761.203.6713 tel | 203.6712 fax
+49(0)175.430.3419 mobile
Skype name: c.mavergames | UTC +1

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Received on Wednesday, 23 May 2012 21:14:48 UTC