[DL] 1st Call for Papers FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTIC WEB IN HEALTH CARE AND THE LIFE SCIENCES

[Joanne Luciano]

1st CALL FOR PAPERS

FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTIC WEB IN HEALTH CARE AND  
THE LIFE SCIENCES

held in conjunction with

THE FIFTH INTERNATIONAL SEMANTIC WEB CONFERENCE (ISWC) 2006, ATHENS, GA

under the auspices of the W3C HCLSIG.

Life Science Research and Health Care are areas undergoing phenomenal  
growth, holding much promise for our future as long as we can manage  
and apply the new knowledge gained without driving up costs. Key to  
their success is the implementation of new informatics models that  
will unite many forms of biological and medical information across  
all institutions, through the encoding of meaning into the data and  
their interpretations. By focusing on the semantics of information,  
researchers will have more access to the knowledge required to  
effectively find cures to diseases, while doctors will have better  
tools for individualized clinical management of patients.

The W3C Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group  
(HCLSIG) http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/  was chartered in December  
of 2005 to develop and support the use of Semantic Web technologies  
and practices to improve collaboration, research, development and the  
adoption of innovation in Health Care and the Life Sciences.  In  
January of 2006, HCLSIG hosted its first face-to-face meeting http:// 
www.w3.org/2001/sw/hcls/f2f-2006/f2f-summary.html to define a set of  
activities focused on reducing the barriers to adoption. As a part of  
this process, we are organizing the first international workshop on  
the Semantic Web in Health Care and the Life Sciences in conjunction  
with ISWC 2006.

Aims:
Our aims for this workshop are threefold. First, we expect the  
workshop to provide a current snapshot of the application of Semantic  
Web technologies’ development trajectory.  Secondly, to provide an  
opportunity to showcase health care and the life sciences as an  
aspect of the Semantic Web to a wider audience within the Semantic  
Web community and to interested external parties. Thirdly, to provide  
a forum for discussion that will facilitate forward planning of both  
the W3C HCLSIG and more generally the research and development agenda  
of the wider community.

Audience:
The workshop encourages participation from both academia and industry  
with an emphasis on the theoretical and practical aspects of applying  
Semantic Web technologies to the challenges of Health Care and the  
Life Sciences. We look forward to industry to present its  
requirements and use cases, and academic and industrial researchers  
to present their ideas and solutions. We encourage participation from:

•   Health Care, Clinical, and Life Science Consortia
•   Research Institutes and Centers
•   Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology Companies
•   IT Solution Vendors
•   Government Agencies

We invite presentation proposals that focus on the application of the  
Semantic Web to the life sciences and/or health care. The emphasis of  
the presentation should be on real world implementations that  
highlight the value added by utilizing a Semantic Web based  
implementation.

Topics of Interest:

•   Core vocabularies and ontologies to support cross-community data  
integration and collaborative efforts
•   Tools for transforming clinical and life science data into RDF  
and OWL formats
•   Guidelines and Best Practices for Resource Identification to  
support integrity and version control
•   Better integration of Scientific Publication with people, data,  
software, publications, and clinical trials
•   Knowledge ecosystems and knowledge lifecycle
•   Ontologies in life sciences: knowledge representation, ontology  
creation, maintenance and evaluation in health care and the life  
sciences.
•   Applications of SW in clinical protocols and pathways
•   Applications of SW in drug safety and efficacy
•   Industrial applications of SW technologies in drug discovery and  
personalized health care

Submissions:
Contributions are sought for position papers for presentation.  
Position papers should be submitted of no more than 1000 words  
(maximum) to iswc2006-hcls-cfp at predmed.com by the submission date.

Please note, by submitting an abstract, you are granting permission  
for your abstract and presentation to be posted on this Wiki: http:// 
esw.w3.org/topic/HCLS/ISWC/Workshop

Important Dates:
Abstract Submission: 15 September, 2006
Notification of acceptance: 1 October, 2006
Workshop Dates:   5 or 6 November, 2006  (TBD, check website)

Organizing Committee:

•   Tonya Hongsermeier, Partners Health Care System
•   Joanne Luciano, Harvard Medical School, Predictive Medicine, Inc.
•   Eric Neumann, Teranode Corporation
•   Susie Stephens, Oracle

For more information on the workshop, the webpage is available at:  
http://esw.w3.org/topic/HCLS/ISWC/Workshop