Discovering novel biomedical relations using ASKNet semantic networks

One of the greatest challenges facing the biomedical community at the moment is information overload. It is simply not feasible for researchers to read and absorb the sheer quantity of information available. For this reason, many important relationships are going undiscovered. This paper details the ASKNet project, and explains how it could be used to develop a tool that would allow biomedical researchers to firstly identify relationships of interest between entities such as proteins and genes, and secondly to automatically decide which of these relationships is genuinely novel in nature. In essence, ASKNet is capable of being the first fully autonomous system to produce genuine scientific discoveries.