NCBO

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) is one of the seven National Centers for Biomedical Computing founded under the NIH Roadmap. Ontologies are representations of the entities and relationships that structure an application area. Ontologies are important for tasks such as data integration, natural-language processing, information retrieval, and decision support.

The goal of the NCBO is to aid biomedical researchers in their knowledge-intensive work, by providing online tools and Web-based resources (such as BioPortal) that enable investigators to access, review, and integrate disparate ontologies in all aspects of biomedical investigation and clinical practice. The Center’s mission is to create software and support services for the application of principled ontologies in biomedical science and clinical care, ranging from tools for application developers to software for end-users.

A major focus of our work involves the use of biomedical ontologies to aid in the management and analysis of data derived from high-throughput biomedical experiments.

The Center is organized into the following six core components:

• Core 1: Computer science research
• Core 2: Bioinformatics research
• Core 3: Driving biological projects and external research collaborations
• Core 4: Infrastructure
• Core 5: Education
• Core 6: Dissemination

The Center is a collaboration that includes workers at Stanford University, Mayo Clinic, the University at Buffalo, the University of Victoria, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University, and the Medical College of Wisconsin.