Functionalities Archives | ONTOFORCE | Powering Citizen Data Science

DISQOVER 4.00 and the power of Visual Analytics

With the release of version 4.00 of our DISQOVER platform, we bring the power of Visual Analytics to your data discoveries. The deep integration with DISQOVER’s core linked data philosophy creates a unique offering, and allows you to endeavor data exploration journeys that were previously unthinkable.

Search for Adverse Events in DISQOVER

DISQOVER is now also hosting a new canonical type: Adverse Event. It contains reports of untoward medical occurrences and treatments, without necessary causal relationship.

Bringing down the virtual walls around hospital data

Integrating an organization’s internal data is challenging. It requires strategic vision by the organization’s leadership and an open mindset on different levels. In our experience, establishing such a solution has a greater chance of success if stakeholders quickly and easily notice the benefits. Small pragmatic initiatives with few data sources that solve a limited number of use-cases, can demonstrate how things can improve for the whole organization.

Connected Data landscapes: a Self-Service Knowledge Platform at Amgen

One and a half years ago we started to work with Amgen to help them improve the way they search and retrieve research data. They were looking for a solution that could aggregate and interlink their internal research data, enrich it with public data and provide an appealing, user-friendly interface for end-users.

New functionalities in 3.12.beta

Right, before we dive into summer, we want to inform you of some great new features in DISQOVER.

A new focus on diseases, active substances, targets and the links in between them

In the last few years, the number of public data sources integrated into DISQOVER has grown steadily and we crossed the triple digit barrier in 2016. Nevertheless, the number of data sources on our waiting list for integration is growing just as fast.

Data sharing and linking are the main hurdles in the quest for new diagnoses and therapies

One of our missions is to directly and indirectly help patients by aggregating and linking both private and public data. A direct help is to facilitate awareness about health and disease by providing proper information about prevention, diagnosis and treatment, amongst other things.

DISQOVER version 3.0 is launched

We are very excited to announce the release of version 3.0 of our DISQOVER platform. After introducing federation in versions 2.x, we succeeded in unlocking a whole new dimension of semantic data in this 3.0 version with the typed links. But wait, there is more! We have also greatly increased usability and flexibility in areas such as discovery management, exporting and dashboards. Can't wait to learn more? Read on!

Bring epidemiology data and disease genes in closer contact

In my previous blog, I tried to explain that the usage of different disease classifications or encodings in data sources like the US and EU clinical trial registries, doesn’t hamper the integration and linking of this kind of data.

Disease classifications are also used to precisely define diseases in other contexts like epidemiology, pharmacovigilance, toxicology, pharmacology, genetics, etc. This data is scattered across a plethora of data sources, maintained by different governmental and other non-profit organizations like research consortia and institutes or individual research groups. If they are keen on providing meaningful and useful data, data providers try to avoid using disease terms that aren’t defined precisely in an ontology.

Up to 3 times faster indexing

Companies that host their own setup of DISQOVER know that a crucial step in the process of making data available is the indexing. In the past few months, we have optimized this process. Indexing now runs up to 3 times faster while the logging has been more readable and more informative.

DISQOVER is now freely available for everybody

We are delighted to inform you that DISQOVER, our linked open data platform, is now freely available for everybody. All you need is to do is create an account on DISQOVER.com and you too can begin finding more open data. DISQOVER contains 110+ public data sources that are converted into 5 star, semantic data formats by ONTOFORCE and its partners.

The gap shouldn’t be that wide between US and EU clinical trials

Human beings, and to a greater extent scientists, try to order items for a purpose. In biomedical sciences, probably no other subject is more diversely ordered or classified as human conditions or diseases – hereinafter abbreviated as ‘diseases’. None of these classifications claims to be the one and only truth or is able to serve all purposes. Instead, many classifications co-exist and are widely accepted – or enforced – by the various stakeholders in life sciences: lab scientists, clinicians, pharmaceutical and biotech firms, regulatory bodies, governments, etc. With different classifications come different definitions of terms even if they are highly similar or have exactly the same meaning.

But what about searching, comparing and analyzing similar data where different diseases classifications are applied? Or what about compiling data about diseases that are produced and maintained for a specific purpose?

Explaining semantic search (in short and not-so-short)

This is a question I get quite often: what is semantic search? I’ll give you the short and not-so-short answer. As well as some possible applications which we’ve included our own semantic search platform.

Getting smarter with semantic search

How well is data and information management handled at your company? Are you using Big Data? Have you heard of semantic search? These were some of the questions we asked people at the Knowledge For Growth 2015 convention (May 2015). As a semantic search company, we learned that there’s still some education to be done around it. But, looking at it positively, semantic search is considered to be a highly relevant asset for many people within the life sciences industry. Here are the results of our survey.

Our workshop, ONTOFORCE at Knowledge For Growth 2015 – part II

Around 40 participants joined us for our ‘Big Data Workshop: Getting knowledge out of (Big) data’. Hans Constandt, CEO, and Filip Pattyn, Product Manager and Bioinformatician at ONTOFORCE, introduced and demonstrated DISQOVER – our platform to quickly discover insights out of vast amounts of data.