Standards For Human Specimen Database Modeling

Question

[matthewb]

Hello,

I'm wondering if there are any standards or best-practices available on database models for human research specimens. My searches have not been very productive.

Specifically, I'm looking for guidance on how to best capture information on tissue type and disease diagnosis, particularly regarding balancing simplicity with expressivity. Are there best practices for capturing any level of detail that comes in with specimens, but still providing search services that can return this detailed information grouped together with similar specimens?

Thanks, Matthew

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

what kind of data would you put in this "human specimen database" ?

[matthewb]

Data about the specimens for tracking purposes and to facilitate analysis of data from assays run on the specimens. Basic demographic data: age, ethnicity, clinical disease diagnosis, etc.; data about the specimen: tissue type, tissue diagnosis, procedure used to obtain the sample, etc.

Answer 1

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

There is a standard named HL7: http://www.hl7.org/

Based on your comment I would just use a RDF engine to store all those heterogeneous data, using one or more appropriate ontology. e.g: http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/1086

[matthewb]

Thanks for your input, Pierre. Within HL7, do you know if one of those standards is specific to storing and tracking specimens for research?