Summary
Objectives:
The goal of this paper is to identify how Grid technology can be applied for the
development and deployment of integration systems, bringing together distributed and
heterogeneous biomedical information sources for medical applications.
Methods:
The integration of new genetic and medical knowledge in clinical workflows requires
the development of new paradigms for information management in which the ability to
access and relate disparate data sources is essential. We adopt a requirements perspective
based on the user needs we have identified in the development of the INFOGENMED system
to assess current Grid technology against those requirements.
Results:
The gap between Grid features and distributed biomedical information integration
needs is characterized. Results from prospective studies are also reported.
Conclusions:
Grid infrastructures offer advanced features for the deployment of collaborative
computational environments across virtual organizations. New Grid developments are
in line with the problem of multiple site information integration. From the INFOGENMED
point of view, Grid infrastructures need to evolve to implement structured data access
services and semantic content description and discovery.
Keywords
Grid technology - medical informatics - computational biology - systems integration
- health applications
