Proceedings++
                           of+
                   +
                 THE++
              WORKSHOP+
                 ON+
    STARTING+AN+OBI:BASED+BIOBANK+
              ONTOLOGY+
             (OBIB+2014)+
                                      +

                       Proceedings+
                         edited+by+
                              +
                   Mathias+Brochhausen+
                     Melissa+Haendel+
                   Christian+J.+Stoeckert+
                         Jie+Zheng+
                              +


OBIB 2014 was held in conjunction with the 5th International
     Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO 2014)
                    Houston, TX, USA
                     October 6-7, 2014




                         	
  55	
  
Preface +
Biobanks are a critical resource for translational science. However, they often suffer from
a lack of semantics in their ability to disseminate data and make it readily queryable. The
OBO Foundry provides ontologies that are relevant to representing the structure and
function of biobanks. The workshop organizers developed an ontology for biobanking
based on the Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI), an OBO Foundry ontology,
aiming to support consistent annotation of biobank resources and provide semantics to
biobank resources. The workshop focuses on problems and requirements of an ontology
for biobanking, as well as potential solutions. Following topics are covered:

   •   Information models describing biobanks, their strengths, weaknesses, and
       competency criteria
   •   Reports of biobank related ontologies
   •   Case studies of applying ontologies to biobanks

The biobank workshop provides a platform to people from the biobank world who are
interested in bringing ontologies into this effort. Over 30 people attended the workshop
and initiated the potential collaboration following the workshop.

Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the keynote speaker, Dave Parrish, who gave an excellent talk on
The Bio-Specimen Knowledge Bank. We would also like to thank the ICBO organizers
for hosting the workshop.

Organizers of Biobank workshop ((in alphabetical order):
Mathias Brochhausen, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR
Melissa Haendel, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR
Christian Stoeckert, Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA
Jie Zheng, Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA+




                                           	
  56