Ontologies

BioPortal is an open repository of biomedical ontologies that stores ontologies developed in various formats, that provides for automatic updates by user submissions of new versions, and that provides access via Web browsers and through Web services. This is a great place to explore and search for ontologies related to different types of data and fields of biomedical study.

RxNorm provides normalized names for clinical drugs and links its names to many of the drug vocabularies commonly used in pharmacy management and drug interaction software, including those of First Databank, Micromedex, Multum, and Gold Standard Drug Database. By providing links between these vocabularies, RxNorm can mediate messages between systems not using the same software and vocabulary.

SNOMED CT is one of a suite of designated standards for use in U.S. Federal Government systems for the electronic exchange of clinical health information and is also a required standard in interoperability specifications of the U.S. Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel. The clinical terminology is owned and maintained by SNOMED International, a not-for-profit association.

The Gene Ontology (GO) knowledgebase is the world’s largest source of information on the functions of genes. This knowledge is both human-readable and machine-readable, and is a foundation for computational analysis of large-scale molecular biology and genetics experiments in biomedical research.