BMC Bioinformatics

Precision medicine [1] has become a most promising methodology for clinical medicine, which relies heavily on rich biomedical knowledge and information of individual patients such as genetic content, living habits, environmental factors, etc. [2]. US National Academy of Sciences claims in a 2011 research report that a biomedical knowledge network based on biological data and knowledge is necessary for precision medicine [3]. How to compute relatedness between concepts and discover valuable information and implicit knowledge effectively and efficiently from such hybrid knowledge (both structural and non-structural) networks is a key of paramount importance to the realization of precision medicine, and a huge challenge facing the biomedical research community. It is agreeable that the knowledge network should include all the knowledge sources, information systems and repositories in biomedicine available today and in the future, spanning the whole spectrum of structural and non-structural information and knowledge. One type of important knowledge sources is ontology.