March 7, 2007

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Level: Advanced

Jack Myers of the Metadata Company, will present current cutting edge ontology integration R&D conducted for the USN to support critical infrastructure protection. The research focuses on issues associated with the integration and use of complex vocabulary-based ontologies in the workplace. Representative issues include resolving difficulties creating statements and queries in triples such that they are not unmanageably large; and, fully integrating ontologies so that not only will classes and relationships between them that are common to each integrated ontology be available, but for all of these to be available to each ontology. Jack will discuss the issues addressed by the research, the use of a simple semantic ontology data language used to conduct the research along with the results. Examples will be offered using the Unified Medical Library System (UMLS) and the Gene Ontology (GO).

Implications for the practical use of ontologies in the marketplace using the semantic ontology language will be presented Bullet Points:

• A detailed description of the structure of the ontology model that is being used (which will be in the public domain in 2007) will be provided along with examples of queries across multiple domains.
• Specific examples of how other ontologies can be mapped to the generalized model will be shown. Other medical ontologies (e.g., National Institute of Health’s Oncology Ontology, the OBO, and other Healthcare Ontologies and data models) are candidates to be added to this ‘knowledgebase’.
• The intermediate goal of this R&D project is to demonstrate that all medical and health knowledge can be fully integrated into one general model using the basis of the semantic ontology language. Previous work demonstrated that queries can be developed that can access needed data from externally defined sources to provide cross-domain solutions.
• Mr. Myers will show how existing healthcare data can be integrated into the ontologies.

Jack E. Myers, co-founder of The Metadata Company, is a pioneer in the development of advanced methods and tools for data management and system interoperability. His more than 40 years of systems experience spans a wide range of industries, with a significant emphasis in engineering and healthcare. He has led the development of a number of tools based on his Semantic Data Language and is an innovator in system interoperability tools.