For the Sake of Research and Patient Care, Scientists Must Find Common Language

June 27, 2011

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In July, hundreds of international scientists from dozens of biomedical fields will meet at the University at Buffalo seeking a common language with which to energize cross-disciplinary research.

The International Conference on Biomedical Ontology will take place July 26-30, and conference convener Barry Smith, PhD, says attendees have a common goal: to enable all of the data produced by the entire spectrum of life sciences to be easily retrieved and understood by those working in all biomedical fields, from the molecular to the global scale.

"It is a huge order," he says, "little understood by the general public and difficult to achieve, but absolutely necessary for the continued development of biomedical science. It promises benefits in some ways similar to those brought to physics by the standardization of units of measure in the 18th century."

The goal is so important, that Smith, an internationally-recognized medical ontologist, Julian Park Chair and SUNY Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at UB, has devoted his professional life to this endeavor.

The public may assume that when biomedical scientists talk, they use the same words to mean the same things. But as Smith points out, in different research fields, even such common terms as "pain," "gene," "blood" and "cancer" may have very different meanings as used in different contexts. With the exponential growth of biomedical data, this simple fact has enormous implications. It leads to incompatibilities that frequently confuse, halt cross-disciplinary research and severely limit communication among researchers.

"In order to advance science," he says, "it is crucial to successful biomedical research that researchers in various disciplines, from molecular biology to public health, who write in different languages and use discrete reporting schemes, accurately translate terms used by all systems in which they operate.

"Otherwise, meaning is lost. Information pertaining to research results cannot be found, in ways which can have devastating consequences to medical research," Smith says.

"Shared ontologies, which are agreed-upon systems of meaning are designed to prevent this from happening, to enhance knowledge among systems that could not otherwise talk to each other," he says.

"We not only need to develop and populate ontologies," Smith says, "but encode shared definitions in a way that enables computer programs to use them, and then promulgate our results to researchers throughout the world so that they understand this new knowledge and have functional access to it.

Clinical Research Vocabulary - News


For the Sake of Research and Patient Care, Scientists Must Find Common Language

Information pertaining to research results cannot be found, in ways which can have devastating consequences to medical research," Smith says. "Shared ontologies, which are agreed-upon systems of meaning are designed to prevent this from happening,



Nurturing the Self of the Child with Asperger's

And will you recognize him when I inform you that he's a bit clumsy, speaks with an adult's vocabulary, is awfully disorganized and suffers colossal anxiety? Like most of us, hearing this description will give you some sense of the child.



Accepting her own challenge, businesswoman donates $1 million to create UF ...

Yearly interest earned on the gift will fund groundbreaking research, teaching and clinical programs conducted by the appointed scholar. Zucker's gift follows the creation of a new interdisciplinary Center for Excellence in Early Childhood Studies in



Scientists given £6.2m for talking computers

It is hoped that technology which responds to speech could soon be able to recognise an individual's voice and become familiar with their vocabulary, accent and vocal expressions. It could also be able to follow the flow of a conversation and to gloss




Not Knowing This Much About Paid Medical Trials Can Negatively ...

Inside trial offers are now being carried out most often with regards to a substance, injection or even some form of method to know the efficiency about them. Simply by and large, the goal of such studies are living to stop a ailment, deal with a malady, solve a problem, regain a situation in order to cure unusual symptoms to name a handful of.

So that you can satisfy the requirements, human beings are now being welcomed for you to conduct the test while a paid service. Hence, a medical research for your newly developed as well as created medicine, products, or plan of action getting executed upon people if you are paying these is termed paid medical trials.

There are so many kinds of this kind of assessments to bifurcate the process. Medical research organization, pharmaceutical drug firm as well as school experts are the type that will conduct these kinds of strategies. Depending on the dependence on your test, you’ll find mostly two categorizations are increasingly being followed for healthcare tests.

Inside the first case, healthy individuals are being decided on for the outlined strategy. Almost all of the referred to as observational trial offers. On this category, a distinct health care medicines whether it’s as supplements or perhaps powder should be checked for its efficacy for the wholesome individuals regarding paid numerous studies.

Your second group of folks are the types who are by now afflicted through the drug, disorder, sign, issue or disease to make certain whether the definite method of the healthcare trial will be able to treat the specific situation or not. It’s known as interventional paid for clinical trials. The following, only those will probably be picked and paid out that are previously affected so that they will be given the substance or perhaps the remedy to learn be it curing the sickness you aren’t.

Subsequently, there exists one other solution to perform medical trial offers in relation to your choice whether or not the bestower should be kept in the center for the remark or even could stay out there part after performing the experiment. People who is going to be held in the actual center are called inpatient and those who find themselves liberal to chase the exam are known as hospital in the event of compensated healthcare trials.

Combined with the key taxonomy of the trials’ actions, a number of names given to these in the vocabulary regarding health-related scientific disciplines to find out them far better. One of its types is named while therapy trials. This particular means test accomplished for clean treatments, naïve mishmash in the medications or even story methods or perhaps lifetime of measures for particular surgical procedures or usage of a non standard substance for radiotherapy with the other individuals.


Clinical Research Vocabulary - Bookshelf

Cancer informatics, essential technologies for clinical trials

Cancer informatics, essential technologies for clinical trials

As new concepts enter the research vocabulary, they quickly begin to be used in the NCI clinical trials and grants administration applications. ...

A medical informatics odyssey, visions of the future and lessons from the past

A medical informatics odyssey, visions of the future and lessons from the past

An Assessment of Cancer Clinical Trials Vocabulary and IT Infrastructure in the US Gwaltney, Katie, MS Principal SRA International, Inc. Rockville, ...

Lexical inferencing procedures, or, Talking about words, receptive procedures in foreign language learning with special reference to English

Lexical inferencing procedures, or, Talking about words, receptive procedures in foreign language learning with special reference to English

Turning to vocabulary studies, Meara in his introduction to a recent ... not to the other main type of studies, the psy- cholinguistic clinical research. ...

Adaptive Health Management Information Systems, Concepts, Cases, and Practical Applications

Adaptive Health Management Information Systems, Concepts, Cases, and Practical Applications

The Vocabulary Problem The chief aim of HL7 is to address the vocabulary ... well as enhancing clinical research and promoting population health management. ...

Bioethical and evolutionary approaches to medicine and the law

Bioethical and evolutionary approaches to medicine and the law

[The] fostering collaborative establishment of national standards for clinical research vocabulary, databases, and information technologies in clinical ...

Day-to-day Articles Directory


Clinical Trials
Types or research. How do you get started? Vocabulary. Criteria for Site Selection ... conduct of the clinical trial. Their responsibilities include ...

CTSPedia: CTSpedia.WebHome
CTSpedia: A Knowledge Base for Clinical and Translational Research ... and other items useful for clinical and translational researchers and to provide ...

Terminology Resources - National Cancer Institute
Terminology Resources: NCI Enterprise Vocabulary Services (EVS), Dictionaries, FedMed, ... It covers vocabulary for clinical care, translational and basic research, and public ...

Respiratory Research | Full text | Marketing data: Has the ...
The relationship between the value-laden vocabulary and impact factor among fundamental biomedical research and clinical journals has been explored. ...

BioMed Central | Full text | Ontology driven integration ...
Ontology driven integration platform for clinical and translational research ... sources must be normalized, integrated and mapped to medical vocabulary systems. ...