Ontology Outreach Advisory OOA Healthcare Life Sciences Chapter

Ontology Outreach Advisory (OOA) Healthcare & Life Sciences Chapter Werner Ceusters (werner. ceusters@ecor. uni-saarland. de) European Centre for Ontological Research VUB STARLab All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document

Introduction • Ontology is a major issue in H&LSc: – ‘Ontology’ in Google: 4. 310. 000 hits (May 27, 2005) • Gene Ontology (5 th): gene annotation • MGED ontology (17 th): micro-array experiments – ‘Ontology’ + ‘. . . ’ in Google: • ‘healthcare’: 71. 000 – ‘Terminology and Ontology Management Systems’ (1 th) • ‘life sciences’: 59. 600 • ‘medicine’: 191. 000 – Medicine and Metaphysics: Conference in Buffalo (1 th) • ‘biomedical’: 124. 000 – Ontology and Biomedical Informatics Rome 2005 (2 nd) • ‘drug’: 117. 000 All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 1

Driving factor: ontology for “Semantic Interoperability” • Proposed definitions (WHO SI group) – Two information systems are semantically interoperable to the extent that each can faithfully carry out the tasks for which it was designed using content taken from the other – An ontology is a representation of some preexisting domain of reality, which • (1) reflects the properties of the objects within its domain in such a way that there obtains a systematic correlation between reality and the representation itself, • (2) is intelligible to a domain expert • (3) is formalized in a way that allows it to support automatic information processing All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 2

Problem areas • Pharmaceutical Industry: – Bring drug discovery back to Europe: • Make “messy” databases more useful • Consumer health: – Opposing forces: • Quality of information • Make them consume • Malpractice suits • Public sector health: – Cost containment • Cost effectiviness of treatment, prevention • Bio-informatics world: – How to find out that a ‘discovery’ is a ‘new’ discovery ? All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 3

An action plan for a European e. Health Area. • By the start of 2005: – MS and EC should agree on an overall approach to benchmarking in order to assess the quantitative, including economic, and qualitative impacts of e-Health. • By end 2006: – in order to achieve a seamless exchange of health information across Europe through common structures and ontologies, MS, in collaboration with the EC, should identify and outline interoperability standards for health data messages and electronic health records, taking into account best practices and relevant standardisation efforts. • By end 2008: – the majority of all European health organisations and health regions (communities, counties, districts) should be able to provide online services such as teleconsultation (second medical opinion), e-prescription, e-referral, telemonitoring and telecare. All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 4

Response to invitation • About 20 invitations on May 18 • Responses: – Positive • • AGFA Healthcare: Dr. Dirk Colaert Bio. Wisdom: Steve Gardner Health. Grid: Yannick Legré Empirica: Karl Stroetmann – Checking right person involvement • IBM Research: Amnon Shabo – Negative • Entelos: Alex Bangs (Computer-based disease simulation systems) All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 5

H&LSc Chapter objectives • In line with OOA objectives • Specific goals / milestones – Composition should be balanced: • reflecting market segments – – Biomedical and bio-informatics Pharmaceutical (therapeutics, diagnostics) Biomedical equipment Healthcare services » Therapeutic, diagnostic, health economy, insurance • Reflecting horizontal forces within the domain – – Standardisation bodies: CEN/TC 251, ISO/TC 215 Communities: Open. EHR, Open. Clinical Networks of Excellence Several ‘ontology’ builders and distributors All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 6

H&LSc Chapter objectives (continued) • Specific goals / milestones (continued) – Concrete action plan • Short term – – – Inventory of biomedical and bio-informatics ontologies Select evaluators Set evalution fee principles (in & out) Invite developers for submission Targeted dissemination and promotion plan • Longer term – Steer towards quality improvement of ontologies – Agree on terminology for types of ontology All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 7

Now is the right time ! • Making Biomedical Ontologies and Ontology Repositories Work (NF. Noy, DL. Rubin, M A. Musen) – One possible solution is to create virtual ontology repositories, which would let users rate and compare the ontologies as well as making the ontologies searchable and easier to browse. – IEEE Intelligent Systems Vol. 19, No. 6, Nov-Dec 2004 – But !!! • Are users enough qualified to do this ? • OBO initiative: – everybody could dump an ‘ontology’ on their server. – Recently: a mandatory set of ontological relations All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 8

Some parameters (Robert Colomb) All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 9

Conclusion • H&LSc is an ideal environment for OOA – Abundance of systems – Various players – Loads of confusions • H&LSc is a difficult environment for OOA – Strong personalities – Big budgets have been spent, nobody can afford losing face All rights reserved © VUB STARLab <<Confidential Document>> Document 10