  The Health-e-Child project aims to develop an integrated healthcare platform
for European paediatrics. In order to achieve a comprehensive view of childrens
health, a complex integration of biomedical data, information, and knowledge is
necessary. Ontologies will be used to formally define this domain knowledge and
will form the basis for the medical knowledge management system. This paper
introduces an innovative methodology for the vertical integration of biomedical
knowledge. This approach will be largely clinician-centered and will enable the
definition of ontology fragments, connections between them (semantic bridges)
and enriched ontology fragments (views). The strategy for the specification and
capture of fragments, bridges and views is outlined with preliminary examples
demonstrated in the collection of biomedical information from hospital
databases, biomedical ontologies, and biomedical public databases.

Databases