Representing multi-database study schemas for reusability.

The need for easy, non-technical interfaces to clinical databases for research preceded translational research activities but is made more important because of them. The utility of such interfaces can be improved by the presence of a persistent, reusable and modifiable structure that holds the decisions made in extraction of data from one or more datasources for a study, including the filtering of records, selection of the fields within those records, renaming of fields, and classification of data. This paper demonstrates use of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) as a data representation of these decisions which define a study schema.