In the past few years, the promises of biotechnology - understanding the human body and its intercellular processes, detailed knowledge of health and disease, better diagnostics and treatments - have been driven ever closer to fruition. These insights are accompanied by an unprecedented torrent of biological data streaming out of the research labs.

The Software Engineering Approach
Knowledge-based systems enable their users to manage massive amounts of heterogeneous data in order to obtain deep insight into highly complex interrelationships. Introducing this great potential to laboratory physicians, molecular biologists or pharmacologists is the overall goal of the so-called BIOMIS-Project, which has been started in September 2003 as an FHplus infrastructure setup activity to realize novel, highly specialized solutions for biomedical applications.

FHplus Triggers BIOMIS
FHplus is a research program, funded by two Austrian ministries (bmvit and bmbwk) to setup and enhance R&D capacity and competence in Austrian universities of applied sciences (UAS). In a first call, the FHplus jury selected 20 of the 65 submitted projects for support. For detailed information about program and projects, please have a look at TIG. One of the supported R&D activities is UAS Hagenberg's BIOMIS-Project for the development of knowledge-based bio-medical information systems.

Research Subjects and Partners
During the overall runtime of five years, a consortium of scientific and economic partners are dealing with several ambitious research domains in order to create three key applications based on a common IT-system structure.

For research of dermatological diseases and aging processes in skin cells a deep comprehension of metabolic pathways and involved proteins is necessary. This knowledge enables pharmacologists to find and/or design new substances, which are the fundamentals for customized drugs and cosmetics. Within the work package Insilico Proteomic System, a project group of dermatologists and molecular biologists from the Universitätsklinik für Dermatologie in Salzburg, supported by the University of Salzburg (Institute for Genetics and General Biology), and computer scientists from the UAS Hagenberg are developing knowledge-based applications to accomplish these goals.

The second work package involves a major problem in the preparation of organ transplantations: To avoid organ rejections in potential recipients, multiple, costly and time-consuming laboratory tests are necessary to ascertain whether available donator organs are compatible. Together with UAS Hagenberg, the Human Leukocyte Antigen Laboratory of the Red Cross Blood Central in Linz is teaming up to realize a system for Computer Aided Tissue Typing, which promises drastic improvements for test procedures and - above all - recipient candidates.

The third work package, called Telemedical Information System for Large Scale Laboratories, is developed together with AMS Engineering Ltd. Since modern medical laboratories offer more then 3,000 different test methods to their customers, it is a real challenge for physicians to choose the right test suite for verification of their presumed diagnosis. This knowledge-based telemedical system, however, will help to find the best solution.