Infection Transmission Ontology: Standardization of Infection Transmission Data

Data of transmission of infections in animals and humans enable the quantification of crucial parameters, like the reproduction number. Datasets on transmission in small groups may vary in format, structure, syntax and semantics. It is difficult to combine these heterogeneous datasets, for example, to do reanalysis and meta-analysis. In this paper we integrate existing datasets on transmission experiments by using semantic web technologies. We have developed an Infection Transmission Ontology that describes the main concepts and relations in the domain of transmission of microorganisms between hosts. By mapping existing datasets to the concepts in the Infection Transmission Ontology, the datasets are standardized and can be combined. We successfully applied the ontology to four transmission datasets and further analysed them in meta-analysis.