Feb 10, 2008

Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Workshop (21-25 Apr 2008)

SEMANTIC WEB FOR HEALTH CARE AND LIFE SCIENCES WORKSHOP
held in conjunction with
The 17th International World Wide Web Conference
April 21-25, 2008
Beijing, China

Biomedical researchers need to be able to ask questions that span many heterogeneous data sources in order to make well-informed decisions. For this to be achieved, data about drugs, patients, diseases, genes, proteins, and pathways must be effectively integrated. Yet the integration of disparate biomedical data continues to be a challenge to achieve.

Many organizations are now exploring the use of Semantic Web technologies in the hope of easing the effort of data integration. The benefits promised by the Semantic Web include aggregation of heterogeneous data using explicit semantics, simplified annotation and sharing of findings, the expression of rich and well-defined models for data aggregation and search, easier reuse of data in unanticipated ways, and the application of logic to infer additional insights.

W3C has established the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences (HCLSIG) Interest Group to help organizations in their adoption of the Semantic Web. The HCLSIG is chartered to develop and support the use of Semantic Web technologies to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation adoption in the domains of Health Care and Life Sciences. As a part of realizing this vision, we are organizing a workshop on the Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences in conjunction with WWW2008.

Audience:
The workshop encourages participation from industry and academia with an emphasis on the practical aspects of applying Semantic Web technologies to the challenges of Health Care and the Life Sciences. We encourage participation from Pharmaceutical and Biotech Companies, Health Care Organizations, Universities and Research Institutes, IT Vendors, and
Government Agencies.

Topics of Interest:
- Semantic integration
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Semantic Web applications
- Semantic Web Services
- Querying RDF/OWL
- Query mediation and translation
- Semantic mashups

Submissions:
Authors are invited to submit papers in any of the areas listed above at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hcls2008

Papers should follow the general format of refereed papers for WWW2008 as described at: http://www2008.org/submissions/index.html

Important Dates:
Paper submission: Extended until February 1, 2008
Notification of acceptance: February 22, 2008
Final version of accepted papers for inclusion on conference CD: February 29, 2008
Final version of accepted papers: March 21, 2008
Date of workshop: April 22, 2008