OBIB-a novel ontology for biobanking

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Biomedical Informatics
• Data Science

Background:

• Biobanking requires extensive data integration for analysis and specimen sharing.
• Ontologies offer a promising approach for semantic integration of biobank data.
• Existing ontologies lack the comprehensive coverage for diverse biobank user scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a comprehensive ontology for biobanking.
• To improve semantic integration and data sharing in biobanks.

Main Methods:

• Two biobanking ontologies were developed based on Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies Foundry principles.
• A modular approach was used to merge the two ontologies.
• The merging process was facilitated by shared Upper Ontologies and reused classes from pre-existing ontologies.

Main Results:

• The Ontology for Biobanking (OBIB) was created by merging two source ontologies with no overlap.
• OBIB offers significantly broader coverage than the individual source ontologies.
• The ontology is successfully implemented in managing information at the Penn Medicine BioBank.

Conclusions:

• Sharing development principles and Upper Ontologies simplifies ontology merging.
• This approach leads to ontologies with broader coverage for biobanking applications.