Epoch

We are building an ontology-based architecture to support the management of clinical trials. At the core of our architecture is a suite of ontologies that we call Epoch that encodes knowledge about the clinical trial domain that is relevant to trial management applications. The ontologies define the vocabulary and semantics necessary for formal representation of clinical trials.

The Epoch framework has software components that facilitate the sharing of the ontological formalisms among heterogeneous applications, thus promoting semantic interoperability among these applications. We are tailoring our approach to meet the requirements in the management of clinical trials at the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), which develops new therapeutics for immune-mediated disorders. Our work is borne out of the collaborative research efforts with ITN in addressing the informatics needs of collecting, managing, integrating and analyzing clinical trial and immunoassay data.