Mission & Vision

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is an international consortium of world-class researchers committed to improving human health by developing technology and infrastructure that accelerates biomedical discovery.

Our vision is that all biomedical knowledge and data are disseminated on the Internet using principled ontologies in such a way that the knowledge and data are semantically interoperable and useful for furthering biomedical science and clinical care.

Our mission is to create software and support services for the application of principled ontologies in biomedical science and clinical care, ranging from tools for application developers to software for end-users.

  • Biomedical means both biological and medical. Our scope extends to all knowledge and data that is relevant to the understanding or improvement of human biology and health.
  • Knowledge and data are semantically interoperable when they enable predictable, meaningful, computation across knowledge sources developed independently to meet diverse needs.
  • Principled ontologies are ontologies that follow NCBO-recommended formats and methodologies for ontology development, maintenance, and use.