Informatics and standards for nanomedicine technology

Abstract

There are several issues to be addressed concerning the management and effective use of information (or data), generated from nanotechnology studies in biomedical research and medicine. These data are large in volume, diverse in content, and are beset with gaps and ambiguities in the description and characterization of nanomaterials. In this work, we have reviewed three areas of nanomedicine informatics: information resources; taxonomies, controlled vocabularies, and ontologies; and information standards. Informatics methods and standards in each of these areas are critical for enabling collaboration, data sharing, unambiguous representation and interpretation of data, semantic (meaningful) search and integration of data; and for ensuring data quality, reliability, and reproducibility. In particular, we have considered four types of information standards in this review, which are standard characterization protocols, common terminology standards, minimum information standards, and standard data communication (exchange) formats. Currently, due to gaps and ambiguities in the data, it is also difficult to apply computational methods and machine learning techniques to analyze, interpret and recognize patterns in data that are high dimensional in nature, and also to relate variations in nanomaterial properties to variations in their chemical composition, synthesis, characterization protocols, etc. Progress towards resolving the issues of information management in nanomedicine using informatics methods and standards discussed in this review will be essential to the rapidly growing field of nanomedicine informatics.

Nanoinformatics: a new area of research in nanomedicine

“…As mentioned, the choice of unique material identifiers is an important subtopic of ongoing research by the new Nanomaterials Registry supported jointly by the NCI, the National submit your manuscript | www.dovepress.com Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. 70 The registry has developed a prototype database and user interface and initial datasets are being curated. 71 A related important issue is that of equivalency -that is, the determination of whether two nanomaterials are essentially the same.…”

Computational Approaches to Enhance Nanosafety and Advance Nanomedicine

“…Table 1 of Ref. 15 provides an excellent overview of currently available information resources complemented by short sypnopses of each resource's focus and current features in the text. The research communities providing these resources have also begun to address the crucial issues of standards to ensure compatibility of data in the various databases.…”

Integration among databases and data sets to support productive nanotechnology: Challenges and recommendations

“…Understanding and addressing complexities involved in integrating nanomaterial and non-nanomaterial data resources to enable and advance scientific research is a key focus of nanoinformatics (Thomas et al, 2011a). This article discusses the integration of data resources across nanotechnology, including non-nanotechnology resources.…”