News Release: W3C Launches Group Linking Medical Industry with Semantic Web

W3C takes its first step into deploying standards into specific vertical 
services with the launch of the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life 
Sciences Interest Group (HCLSIG). According to Tim Berners-Lee, W3C 
Director and Web inventor, "This new venture puts W3C specifications 
through the paces of a dynamic, multifaceted and interdependent set of 
communities. We have a remarkable opportunity to listen to the area 
experts, to see how the Semantic Web meets their needs, and to serve 
their future requirements."

For more information, please contact Janet Daly <janet@w3.org>, 
+1.617.253.5884, or the W3C Communications Team member in your region.

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W3C Launches Group Linking Medical Industry with Semantic Web

Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group brings 
together medical and research communities

Contact Americas, Australia --
     Janet Daly, <janet@w3.org>, +1.617.253.5884 or +1.617.253.2613
Contact Europe, Africa and the Middle East-
     Marie-Claire Forgue, <mcf@w3.org>, +33.492.38.75.94
Contact Asia --
     Yasuyuki Hirakawa <chibao@w3.org>, +81.466.49.1170

Web Resources:

This Press release
   in English: http://www.w3.org/2005/11/hcls-pressrelease.html.en
   in Japanese: http://www.w3.org/2005/11/hcls-pressrelease.html.ja

W3C's Semantic Web Activity
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

W3C's New Group: Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest 
Group
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/

http://www.w3.org/ -- 22 November 2005 -- The World Wide Web Consortium 
(W3C) is launching a new interest Group to connect medical industry 
verticals with Semantic Web experts in an effort to improve 
collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the 
health care and life science industries. The first of its kind for W3C, 
the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group 
(HCLSIG) deploys standardized Semantic Web specifications into specific 
services defined by a user community.

"This new venture puts W3C specifications through the paces of a 
dynamic, multifaceted and interdependent set of communities," said Tim 
Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "We have a remarkable opportunity to listen 
to the area experts, to see how our work meets their needs, and to serve 
their future requirements."

Obstacles Prevent Sharing of Related Data, Slowing Clinical Research

In both life science research communities and health services provider 
settings, boundaries that inhibit data sharing limit innovation and 
impede efficient care delivery. For example, data and information 
produced by chemists, biologists and clinicians is often unavailable to 
each other, yet the material can be of mutual benefit. To create an 
infrastructure that connects and serves these diverse communities, there 
is a need to both bring together the people, and ground this work in a 
framework that supports semantically-rich system, process and 
information interoperability.

Semantic Web Technologies Can Provide Bridge Between Chemists, 
Biologists, Clinicians and other Researchers

Health care and life sciences research are rapidly evolving, and a 
critical key to their success is the implementation of new informatics 
models that will bridge many forms of biological and medical information 
across institutions. By embedding semantics into medical and research 
information, researchers will have better access to the knowledge 
required to effectively find cures to diseases, make drugs safer and 
more affordable, and enable health-care providers to offer 
individualized clinical management to patients. Leveraging Semantic Web 
technologies will help move away from trial-and-error methods and make 
it easier to use molecular pathway knowledge for more effective decision 
making in clinical research.

W3C Takes Step in Uniting Area Specialists with Web Technologies to 
Improve Communication, Information Sharing

The HCLSIG will develop use cases that demonstrate the value to business 
of adopting Semantic Web technology, core vocabularies and ontologies, 
guidelines and best practices for unique identifiers. The group will 
provide a forum for supporting communication, education, collaboration 
and implementation. The group will also work with other Semantic Web 
groups to gather suggestions for future development, and will support 
and encourage the use of Semantic Web technologies and foster the growth 
of interoperable, policy-aware data and databases in the health care and 
life sciences industries.

W3C has brought together diverse communities -- policy makers, 
technologists, researchers and linguists -- to produce the foundations 
for Web technology, to tremendous effect. This history has encouraged 
W3C to take an additional step with the HCLSIG into vertical 
applications of Web standards.

More information is available from the W3C Semantic Web Health Care and 
Life Sciences home page.

This work is managed by the W3C Technology and Society Domain and is 
part of W3C's Semantic Web Activity.

About the World Wide Web Consortium [W3C]

The W3C was created to lead the Web to its full potential by developing 
common protocols that promote its evolution and ensure its 
interoperability. It is an international industry consortium jointly run 
by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MIT 
CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and 
Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in 
Japan. Services provided by the Consortium include: a repository of 
information about the World Wide Web for developers and users, and 
various prototype and sample applications to demonstrate use of new 
technology. Over 400 organizations are Members of the Consortium. For 
more information see http://www.w3.org/

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Received on Tuesday, 22 November 2005 05:01:24 UTC