metade.org

On Saturday I presented a guest lecture for a masters course on Medical Informatics at the Universidade do Porto, Portugal.

The title of the lecture was: “The Semantic Web: a Medical Perspective”.

I described the issues surrounding the sharing of data in the medical domain, and how the current web fails to address the needs of users wishing to integrate different data sets. I then introduced the semantic web, but I did it from the perspective of linking data rather than the top-down, formal ontologies and logic route.

Although presenting a full lecture was a new experience for me, I think it went well. I gave the presentation in English rather than try a mixture of rusty Portuguese/English, although looking back now perhaps I should have gone with the Portuguese. It’s so easy to drop in a typical English expressions or word that non-native English speakers won’t have a clue about!

I’ve made the slides for the presentation available here: slides (PDF, 7Mb).