? ? Since the beginning of the field of biomedical informatics, one of the great challenges has been to discover and/or invent ways to express biomedical knowledge in computable form, and to thus be able to automate the analysis and interpretation of a wide range of medical data. A goal of this project is to refocus thinking about biomedical programming, not as a technical skill for manipulating bits and bytes, but as a formal logical language for expressing biomedical knowledge, much as mathematics is used as the universal language for expressing knowledge in the physical sciences. There is a need to bring together in a single resource the vast range of concepts, programming techniques, and examples in biomedical informatics, in an exposition that brings out the coherence of the field of biomedical informatics. I propose to write a monograph and create a CD with programming examples, addressing this need. The monograph will develop and explain fundamental ideas in biomedical informatics such as ontologies, decision support systems, qualitative models of biological processes, formulation and processing of queries of biomedical knowledge resources, using example computer programs and data. ? It will focus on building and using data models and knowledge models for biology, and thus will be complementary to existing books on bioinformatics programming, which primarily focus on low level data access and data analysis (sequence matching, statistical clustering, etc.). It will serve as a novel synthesis for those new to biomedical informatics and as a unique reference tool for experienced ? informaticians. ? ? ? ?
| Kalet, Ira J; Mejino, Jose L V; Wang, Vania et al. (2009) Content-specific auditing of a large scale anatomy ontology. J Biomed Inform 42:540-9 |
