Complex Search, Ranks, and Biological Discovery: A User's Perspective

This chapter presents a users perspective regarding the potential applications of the Search Computing technology for biomedical discovery. Recent research on human inherited diseases has increased the number of information resources useful to bridge medicine and biology and to associate genotype and phenotype. The application of the Search Computing technology is discussed in the frame of a number of techniques that can be applied in Life Sciences for managing distributed biomedical data: Federated databases, Grids. Cloud computing, Web Services. Workflow. Particular attention is then devoted to challenges and opportunities deriving from the application of ranking and the management of missing information. Finally, the definition of a standard score function. that could be adopted by all service providers in order to merge all the collected scores for the Search Computing, and the combined use of workflow management systems and Search Computing, are discussed.