caBIG
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
caBIG is the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, a National Cancer Institute (USA) initiative to link cancer researchers and their data. caBIG refers both to the computing infrastructure that will provide interoperability between the NCI-designated Cancer Center community, although the intention is that any organization should be able to participate in, and take advantage of, the tools and data made available through the initiative. There are currently (2006) 800 people from 80 organizations involved in the program, which was initiated in 2004 by the National Cancer Institute's Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB).
One of the primary goals of caBIG is to create a grid infrastructure that supports semantic interoperability. This will enable data and analytical tools provided by the participating cancer research centers and public and private participants to be shared in a manner that is federated and scalable. Currently this is not possible because each research site uses different data definitions and standards, making useful exchange difficult. This effort is in some ways similar to work being done on the Semantic Web project.
The chosen method for implementing semantic interoperability within caBIG is the use of standard vocabularies and ontologies and heavy use of a metadata repository. The National Cancer Institute has built tools that provide these functionalities and service as a common point for creating interoperability.
