Clinical Terminology Shock and Awe

Fifth Annual Workshop of the Clinical and Translational Science Ontology Group

Date: September 7-8, 2016

Venue: Ramada Hotel, Amherst, NY

Rationale: The CTSA Program has always emphasized the need for data standards to promote sharing and comparison of data across the CTSA Consortium and beyond. Yet creation and adoption of such standards is still painfully slow. Urgent action remains necessary. History shows the high value of standard terms, definitions, and symbols (i.e. ontology) to science. But the creation and adoption of such standards often takes decades. Translational science requires a consistent set of standard ontologies spanning all scales, from molecule to organism to population. But clinical terminologies at the macroscale – such as SNOMED and ICD – inhibit translational science. They are inconsistent with successful micro-scale ontologies such as the Gene Ontology, and they also cannot change rapidly with the advance of science. Translational science must settle on standards that evolve in a way that is closely tied to scientific advance. In the case of chemical symbols and SI Units adoption proceeded in three overlapping stages. First came widespread recognition and understanding of the problem. Second, influential stakeholders helped to develop, test, and select appropriate standards. Third, once scientifically useful standards emerged, the community enforced them via peer review. How can we accelerate progress on clinical ontologies through all three stages? How, in other words, can we create and implement standard clinical ontologies that are open and well disseminatedand achieve consortium-wide adoption?

Goals: The Clinical and Translational Science Ontology Group was established in 2012 to leverage the use of common ontologies to support different aspects of information-driven clinical and translational research. The focus of this meeting is to explore new and existing uses of common ontologies to support sharing and discovery of data and resources, researcher networking, and particularly to support the evaluation of research.

Like its predecessors in the series, this meeting is designed to bring together clinical and translational scientists from across the CTSA Consortium who are interested in using ontologies to promote discoverability and interoperability of biomedical data.

​Specific themes will include:

• A​dvanc​ing​ reproducibility ​of clinical and translational research (BFO, OBI, LOINC)

• ​Advancing EHR interoperability​ (addressing SNOMED and meaningful use regulations whereby SNOMED CT is required for recording problem list and smoking status)

• Improving EHR data usability​

• ​I​mproving SNOMED usability

• Advancing interoperability of clinical data generally and of EHR data in particular

• ​Improving EHR usability in the clinic

• i2b2, PCORnet, OMOP and other approaches to clinical data sharing

Persons interested in attending or in presenting at the meeting should write to Barry Smith.

Schedule

Wednesday, September 7

8:00am Registration and Breakfast

6:00pm Dinner

Thursday, September 8

8:00am Registration and Breakfast

4:00pm Close

Sponsors

Department of Biomedical Informatics, University at Buffalo

National Center for Ontological Research, Buffalo

Organizing Committee

Barry Smith (University at Buffalo)

William Hogan (University of Florida)

Participants

Werner Ceusters (Buffalo)

Alexander Diehl (Buffalo)

Peter Elkin (Buffalo)

William Hogan (Gainesville)

Øystein Nytro (Trondheim)

Stefan Schulz (Graz)

Barry Smith (Buffalo)