In October, 2004, Scientific American published an article co-written by Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) w3.org, in which he describes the next-generation Web, the Semantic Web. In a nutshell, with semantic-web technologies, machines can process and integrate data at the server level.

The Semantic Web is built on standards and languages developed and maintained by the W3C such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), Resource Descriptor Framework (RDF), schemas ("blueprints" for describing the structure of XML documents), and the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Here, ontology doesn't involve the study of existence. Rather, ontology includes computer-usable definitions of basic concepts in a subject-specific area -- such as medicine or tool manufacturing -- and the relationships among them.

The W3C has a Semantic Web for Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group. The group "connects medical industry verticals with Semantic Web experts…to improve collaboration, research and development, and innovation-adoption in the healthcare and life-science industries." Read the whole release.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Leslie Gordon,