Bringing epidemiology into the Semantic Web

Epidemiology is a domain of knowledge interconnected with many other domains, thus making it a good candidate for reusing existing ontologies that, despite having been created for different purposes, characterize information frequently manipulated by epidemiologists and public health scientists. This paper presents an evaluation of existing ontologies for the semantic annotation of epidemiological resources. We selected a set of ontologies and proposed a Network of Epidemiology-Related Ontologies (NERO), which can form the core of semantic annotation for data-intensive epidemiology-related information systems, such as epidemic forecasting infrastructures. To support this selection, we defined a set of requirements for inclusion of ontologies in NERO, based on good ontology practice, the interdisciplinary nature of the epidemiological domain and support of semantic web technologies. Most of the selected NERO ontologies are current candidates or members of the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies initiative.