I wanted to inform the group of an interesting conference held by NIH early in the week (Dec 11-12). It discussed Knowledge Environments for Biomedical Research (KEBR), and over 200 experts in life science informatics were invited (about 150 were present) to lend their viewpoints on the subject. Much was around informatics, but research community needs were also expressed.
Ideas on ontologies and data interoperability were thoroughly discussed (and there were dozens of different approaches mentioned), and the Semantic Web came up often from various groups (NIFTI, BIRN, CSHL, NIST ...). The product of this conference were 6 overlapping reports that attempted to define and provide general strategies for how to make this happen. The idea being someday this will be supported by NIH (+ others?), and funded researchers will need to take advantage of it. I think that there is an obvious coherence between what NIH is looking to do, and what HCLS's vision is about. I mention this mainly to put it on your radar screens... For more details see: http://www.esi-bethesda.com/ncrrworkshops/kebr/index.aspx cheers, Eric
