Bio-informatics

Ontoforce As a start-up with limited resources to devote to R&D, Ontoforce connected with iMinds’ IDLab for help reinventing the search paradigm by developing a federated search solution. The next challenge was to establish a set of data service endpoints — expanding the engine’s search territory beyond just the public web. Because Ontoforce’s solution targeted the biomedical sector, access to university research databases was key. Harvard’s Eagle-i, together with IDLab’s RML stepped in to help on that front. The DISQOVER platform that Ontoforce jointly developed further with IDLab filters and disambiguates query results to add meaning to the data it serves up to users. If a researcher wants to know what diseases are the subject of phase-three clinical trials in, e.g., California, DISQOVER blazes through the network and isolates exactly that information, presenting it graphically in a clean interface that’s easy to understand and manipulate — along with all the relevant links back to the original data. Even the interface is part of the semantic process, bringing extra meaning to displayed data. The Ontoforce solution underscores the importance of collaboration in innovation. iMinds’ IDLab helped federating the search; Harvard’s Eagle-i with IDLab’s RML ensured the data was 5-star quality; and the DISQOVER platform makes sense of it all, “semantifying” the search for users. As a result of this joint collaboration, Ontoforce’s CEO says DISQOVER can scale like no other federated search solution on the market today.