About CTSOC
CTSOC was established in the Spring of 2025 to advance the goals of the NIH CTSA initiative by promoting ontology-based interoperability of data within and between CTSA hubs.
CTSOC currently involves 8 CTSA hubs:
- University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Translational Research Institute (Arkansas)
- University at Buffalo Clinical and Translational Science Institute (Buffalo)
- University of Florida Clinical and Translational Science Institute (Florida)
- University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences (Houston)
- Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (Michigan)
- University of California San Diego Clinical and Translational Research Institute (San Diego)
- University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center Clinical and Translational Science Award (Dallas)
- Clinical and Translational Science Institute of Southeastern Wisconsin (Milwaukee)
Barry Smith (University at Buffalo) William Hogan (Medical College of Wisconsin) will serve as Co-Directors.
Goals
-
Apply an ontology-driven approach to critical areas of CTS where ontology coverage is thus far lacking, including: Clinical and Translational Science Ontology (CTSO), with branches:
- Clinical and Translational Science Organization Ontology (CTSOO)
- Clinical and Translational Science Impact Ontology (CTSIO)
- Social Determinants of Health Ontology (CTSSDHO)
- Public Health Ontology (CTSPHO)
- Ontology for Uses of AI in CTS (CTSAIO)
- Explore ways in which the use of ontologies can improve the usability of data at CTSA hubs.
- Explore ways in which the use of ontologies can streamline exchange and integration of data between CTSA hubs in ways that will promote Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reuse (= FAIRness) of digital assets and thereby manifesting a commitment to the CTSA open science principles.
- Conduct translational science on the ways in which these ontology-based approaches compare to existing common data elements approaches in use by CTSA hubs.
Ontologies
| ID | Title | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|
| MRIO | MRI Ontology | An ontology for the representation of MRI acquisition and analysis. | |
| ODFA | Ontology of Dental-Care Related Fear and Anxiety | An ontology for defining and classifying dental-care related fear, anxiety, and/or phobia (DFA). Developed as a subset of the Oral Health and Disease Ontology (OHD). | |
| OSRA | Ontology of Social Resource Access | An ontology for improving the interoperability of data collected through social determinants of health (SDOH). | |
| PAIN | Pain Ontology | An ontology that contains terms for representing pain as defined by the International Association For the Study of Pain (IASP). | |
| INJO | The Injury Ontology | An ontology to help aggregate and coordinate data about injuries from various fields (e.g., medicine, occupational health, sports, military, legal domain). | |
| OGMS | Ontology of General Medical Science | An ontology for representing treatment of disease and diagnosis and on carcinomas and other pathological entities. | |
| OBI | Ontology for Biomedical Investigations | An integrated ontology for the description of life-science and clinical investigations. | |
| OOSTT | Ontology of Organizational Structures of Trauma centers and Trauma systems | An ontology built for representating the organizational components of trauma centers and trauma systems. | |
| VO | The Vaccine Ontology | An ontology to standardize and integrate information about vaccines, vaccine components, vaccine mechanisms, vaccine data types, and to support computer-assisted reasoning. |