Cloud-Based Semantic Data Management for the VPH-Share Medical Research Community

The European VPH-Share project develops an integrated modular and generic framework for understanding physiological processes in the human body in terms of anatomical structure and biophysical mechanisms. One of the major challenges besides managing and sharing a wide variety of heterogeneous bio-medical data sources relevant to the VPH community is facilitating the search and exploration of these data using semantic technologies. The VPH-Share data infrastructure and management platform has been built on top of a Cloud-based service framework that can take advantage of both public and private IT resources. The data management platform offers tools that cover the whole life-cycle of data integration, selection, semantic annotation and publishing. A comprehensive user interface enables end users to search and explore bio-medical data with the support of semantic technologies, shielding them from the complexity of the underlying IT environment.