This presentation will primarily demonstrate the use of NeOn technologies in  two case studies in the pharmaceutical sector. First, we aim at cataloguing information about pharmaceutical products in order to provide European  associations of pharmacy professionals with access to homogenized information  repositories. NeOn produces a global vademecum where distributed databases and regulations can be integrated and kept up-to-date.

Second, since a European directive in 2002 authorised the use of digitally  signed invoices for commercial transactions, the use of electronic invoices  has grown exponentially, leading to a high level of heterogeneity in formats.  Networked ontologies enable actors involved in a transaction to automatically  process arbitrary invoices by abstracting the underlying information from the  details of their particular encoding and technologies.

Dr. Mathieu d’Aquin is a researcher at the Knowledge Media Institute of the  Open University (United Kingdom). He obtained a PhD from the University of  Nancy, France, where he worked on real-life applications of semantic  technologies to medical knowledge management and decision support. As a member  of NeOn, his main research interests concern techniques such as modularization  and alignment for ontology management, as well as infrastructures to support  the development of next generation Semantic Web applications (the Watson Semantic Web search engine).

Jose Manuel Gómez-Pérez is Research Manager at Intelligent Software Components (iSOCO) in Madrid, Spain. His main interests include Semantic Web technologies and distributed systems, especially Grid systems. He has participated in a large number of international R&D projects, being the leader  of iSOCO’s team in OntoGrid and NeOn, as well as in the privately held  initiative Halo2, funded by Vulcan Inc. He has also led a number of commercial  projects for companies like Vodafone or Volkswagen AG.

Mathieu d’Aquin, KMI, OpenUniversity (UK)

Jose Manuel Gómez-Pérez, iSOCO (ES)