2nd Call for Papers - Deadline September 15 - FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTIC WEB IN HEALTH CARE AND THE LIFE

Reminder - Deadline approaching - September 15, 2006

 

2nd Call for Papers 

 

FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTIC WEB IN HEALTH CARE AND THE LIFE
SCIENCES

 

held in conjunction with

 

THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL SEMANTIC WEB CONFERENCE (ISWC) 2006, ATHENS, GA

 

under the auspices of the W3C HCLSIG.

 

Life Science Research and Health Care are areas undergoing phenomenal growth,
holding much promise for our future as long as we can manage and apply the new
knowledge gained without driving up costs. Key to their success is the
implementation of new informatics models that will unite many forms of
biological and medical information across all institutions, through the encoding
of meaning into the data and their interpretations. By focusing on the semantics
of information, researchers will have more access to the knowledge required to
effectively find cures to diseases, while doctors will have better tools for
individualized clinical management of patients.

 

The W3C Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG)
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/  was chartered in December of 2005 to develop
and support the use of Semantic Web technologies and practices to improve
collaboration, research, development and the adoption of innovation in Health
Care and the Life Sciences.  In January of 2006, HCLSIG hosted its first
face-to-face meeting http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/f2f-2006/f2f-summary.html to
define a set of activities focused on reducing the barriers to adoption. As a
part of this process, we are organizing the first international workshop on the
Semantic Web in Health Care and the Life Sciences in conjunction with ISWC 2006.

 

Aims:

Our aims for this workshop are threefold. First, we expect the workshop to
provide a current snapshot of the application of Semantic Web technologies'
development trajectory.  Secondly, to provide an opportunity to showcase health
care and the life sciences as an aspect of the Semantic Web to a wider audience
within the Semantic Web community and to interested external parties. Thirdly,
to provide a forum for discussion that will facilitate forward planning of both
the W3C HCLSIG and more generally the research and development agenda of the
wider community.

 

Audience:

The workshop encourages participation from both academia and industry with an
emphasis on the theoretical and practical aspects of applying Semantic Web
technologies to the challenges of Health Care and the Life Sciences. We look
forward to industry to present its requirements and use cases, and academic and
industrial researchers to present their ideas and solutions. We encourage
participation from:

 

*   Health Care, Clinical, and Life Science Consortia

*   Research Institutes and Centers

*   Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Companies

*   IT Solution Vendors

*   Government Agencies

 

We invite presentation proposals that focus on the application of the Semantic
Web to the life sciences and/or health care. The emphasis of the presentation
should be on real world implementations that highlight the value added by
utilizing a Semantic Web based implementation.

 

Topics of Interest:

 

*   Core vocabularies and ontologies to support cross-community data integration
and collaborative efforts

*   Tools for transforming clinical and life science data into RDF and OWL
formats

*   Guidelines and Best Practices for Resource Identification to support
integrity and version control

*   Better integration of Scientific Publication with people, data, software,
publications, and clinical trials

*   Knowledge ecosystems and knowledge lifecycle

*   Ontologies in life sciences: knowledge representation, ontology creation,
maintenance and evaluation in health care and the life sciences.

*   Applications of SW in clinical protocols and pathways

*   Applications of SW in drug safety and efficacy

*   Industrial applications of SW technologies in drug discovery and
personalized health care

 

Submissions:

Contributions are sought for position papers for presentation. Position papers
should be submitted iswc2006-hcls-cfp@predmed.com by the submission date.

See website for submission details.

 

Please note, by submitting an abstract, you are granting permission for your
abstract and presentation to be posted on this Wiki:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HCLS/ISWC/Workshop

 

Important Dates:

Abstract Submission: 15 September, 2006

Notification of acceptance: 1 October, 2006

Workshop Dates:   5 or 6 November, 2006  (TBD, check website)

 

Organizing Committee:

 

*   Tonya Hongsermeier, Partners Health Care System

*   Joanne Luciano, Harvard Medical School, Predictive Medicine, Inc.

*   Eric Neumann, Teranode Corporation

*   Susie Stephens, Oracle

 

For more information on the workshop, the webpage is available at:
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HCLS/ISWC/Workshop