SemanticBits

Structuring and understanding data is critical to the success of any biomedical software solution.  SemanticBits has a breadth and depth of experience and understanding in the area of semantics and syntactics that is umatched.  We have helped design and implement an ISO/IEC 11179 compliant metadata repository, as well as the underlying semantic infrastructure of a grid architecture.  When tackling any project that may involve data sharing or standardization, we keep the following concepts firmly in the forefront of the design:

• Semantics: Semantics defines the meaning of data and is critical for systems to understand how to process data.  A solid semantic foundation is necessary when determing how to share data such that the meaning of the data is unambiguously understood by both sender and receiver.  SemanticBits has extensive experience leveraging, authoring, and contributing to standard Terminologies and Vocabularies, which contain the concepts that comprise the semantics of shared data.  The types of ontologies that we have utilized in developing enterprise integration solutions include:
• CTC, CTCAE
• MeDRA
  
• SNOMED
• NCI Thesaurus
• ICD-9/ICD-O
  
• Syntactics: Syntactics defines the structure of data and is critical for systems to be able to parse/process data.  A solide syntactic foundation is necessary at the point of service/component interfaces such that the software systems can "speak" the same data structures.  We have in-depth expertise defining the structure of data in the form of common data elements that are tied to semantic concepts.  This provides a convenient way to share data definitions across systems, enterprises, and organizations.  Furthermore, these common data elements can be translated into common XML Schemas to formalize a common wire format, which further enhances interoperability.
  

Business Process Modeling (BPM) is critical to understanding, modifying, and implementing complex business functions in an enteprise setting.  SemanticBits can work with your business experts to model your processes in a way that they are understandable to the stakeholders in your organization, as well as the developers implementing a system.  When taking on a BPM task, we leverage the following BPM practices:

• Modeling: a business process is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product (serve a particular goal).  They are comprised of management, operational, and supporting processes with specific workflows within and across these activities.  We leverage industry grade tools to model your processes in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and, where appropriate, define these processes formally using standard languages such as BPMN and xBML.
• Business Rules: business rules apply at two different levels of granularity: the management level where organizational goals are described, and the operational level where specific workflows are defined.  The management level business rules can be modeled within the business process diagrams, whereas the operational level business rules can be formally defined and implemented at the level of systems.  We have experience integrating business rule engines into systems, such as Drools, such that workflows can be defined a priori and then executed when a set of constraints are met.  This greatly facilitates automation and consisteny in business practices both across the enterprise as well as within specific systems.