Minutes from 06/28/07 Conference Call

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Telecon, June 28 Present on the call: Christian Cocos, Kerstin Forsberg, Jennifer Fostel, Matthias Samwald, Jim Zheng

Next call July 19, 12 noon EDT.

Topic of discussion: Consortium forming in Austria to secure funding for an ontological representation of clinical trial data consistent with OBI / BFO work.

Matthias gave an introduction and status report of the consortium. It is based in Austria, and eager to work in concert with the OCI and BFO. All on the call were in agreement that is it good to work together. The goal is to have one standard evolved from both (all) efforts that fits the needs of both groups and does not duplicate effort.

The consortium Matthias represents is not the cancergrid project based in the UK. While neither the Austrian consortium nor OCI presently have a direct contact with this group, we aim to understand the alignment of OCI with the cancergrid ontology either during its development or soon after completion. The cancergrid group plans to finish this calendar year and deposit into the OBO Foundry.

Matthias mentioned the experience that some members of the Consortium have with DOLCE. A logical early step will be to compare the alignment of DOLCE and BFO and OBI / OCI, possibly via alignment of a dataset or terms list. The Consortium is more interested in a good collaboration with OCI and alignment with BFO than in using a particular ontology framework. The Austrian consortium does not have a preferred term list at the moment.

The OCI plans are (1) to participate in the OBI Workshop during July 9 – 14 and (2) to continue the process of collecting and grouping terms. It is thought that the OBI and BFO ontologies need more stability before OCI can start to place terms properly. We will focus on clinical research, but include all terms in hand, many of which come from CDISC and RTC schema.

Given the number of efforts towards an ontology for clinical investigations, it is difficult to assess the “right” one. Ideally all would converge. This is one way that OCI and the Austrian consortium could collectively contribute – by understanding DOLCE / BFO / OCI alignment and by collecting, aligning and defining terms from *all* efforts and placing within OCI (or DOLCE) in a manner consistent with BFO.

We have also plans to invite a member of both CDISC and BRIDG to present their projects at an upcoming telecom, and we hope to incorporate terms and solidify a collaboration with both projects.