he National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) has contributed biopharmaceutical manufacturing ontologies to The Open Applications Group (OAGi) for further development as an open-source project. Shifting NIIMBL’s ontology work to an open-source process will encourage broader involvement and adoption of common processes, increasing the overall benefit to the biopharmaceutical industry.
Ontologies are semantic information models tailored for domain experts with clear, formal, and natural language definitions and labels. It represents a data domain through entities, their relations to each other, and literal values.
“These biopharma-specific ontologies will improve interoperability and optimize productivity by allowing data engineers to access, analyze, and share data about their manufacturing processes,” said Roger Hart, NIIMBL Senior Fellow and Big Data Project Lead. “The open-source platform will ensure industry access to the ontologies and allow for continued development and modifications. It will also provide a centralized repository to collect and curate ontologies which are currently privately created and used by small groups within the community.”
OAGi plans to establish a Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry Council (BMIC), which will identify working groups to develop ontologies. The BMIC will join OAGi’s ongoing work in industrial ontologies through its Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF).