The Digital Human: Towards a Unified Ontology for Biomedical Modeling and Simulation

Federation Of American Scientists, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

EIA-0215673 Gerald A Higgins Federation of American Scientists The Digital Human: Towards Unified Ontology for Biomedical Modeling and Simulation This workshop is bringing together researchers from a variety of disciplines to develop a unified ontology for biomedical modeling and simulation. The goal is to develop an ontology that can specify both lower-level cellular models and higher-level tissue, organ and systems models in a manner that is most useful for modeling and simulation. The workshop is organized to specify requirements for the ontology, based on existing models such as the Digital Anatomist Foundation Model of Rosse et al and the emerging BioSPICE ontology. An initial draft of a unified ontology that extends from gross anatomy to cellular components and a detailed plan for converting this draft into a system that can be widely accepted by the research community and can serve as the basis for developing interoperable simulations and other representations of these systems is in preparation. The draft is being prepared by the principle investigators supported by graduate students and post-doctoral fellows, prior to the workshop that will provide an in-depth peer review of the proposed ontology and the plan for next steps A final document being generated by the participants will be a concrete action plan for establishing a framework though which existing ontologies may be unified, expanded and enhanced. As a result, unification of cell-organ ontologies is enhancing the ability of researchers and developers to prepare interoperable simulation models in biomedicine, leading to advancement of our understanding of multiple levels of biological structure and function.