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Health & Life Sciences

15 standards in this subject area

Bioschemas

Extends Schema.org with usage profiles for genes, proteins, datasets, and other life science resources.

Application Profile active Bioschemas Community Est. 2015

Cellosaurus

A comprehensive knowledge resource on cell lines, covering nomenclature, cross-references, and provenance.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics Est. 2012

Chemical Entities of Biological Interest

(ChEBI)

An ontology classifying small chemical compounds by structure, role, and biological activity.

Ontology active European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) Est. 2004

Data Documentation Initiative

(DDI)

Documents surveys, questionnaires, and statistical data across the full research data lifecycle.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active DDI Alliance Est. 1995

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources

(FHIR)

A resource-based framework for exchanging clinical and administrative healthcare data over the web.

Technical Specification active Health Level Seven International Updated March 26, 2023

Gene Ontology

(GO)

The most widely used ontology for annotating gene function across all living species.

Ontology active Gene Ontology Consortium Est. 1998

Human Phenotype Ontology

(HPO)

A controlled vocabulary of over 18,000 clinical features for rare disease diagnosis and genomics.

Ontology active Monarch Initiative / Jackson Laboratory Est. 2008

International Classification of Diseases

(ICD)

The global standard for classifying diseases and causes of death, used by over 130 countries.

Encoding Scheme / Value Vocabulary active World Health Organization Updated February 16, 2026

ISA-Tab

(ISA)

Structures multi-omics experiment metadata into investigation, study, and assay layers.

Element Set / Metadata Schema active ISA Commons Est. 2008

Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes

(LOINC)

Universal codes for identifying laboratory tests, clinical observations, and survey instruments.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active Regenstrief Institute Est. 1994

Medical Subject Headings

(MeSH)

A hierarchical thesaurus of 30,000 descriptors for indexing biomedical literature in PubMed.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active U.S. National Library of Medicine Updated January 21, 2026

NCBI Taxonomy Database

The authoritative classification of over 2.5 million organisms across all NCBI sequence databases.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Est. 1991

NLM Classification

(NLMC)

Organizes biomedical library collections with alphanumeric schedules for preclinical and clinical sciences.

Encoding Scheme / Value Vocabulary active National Library of Medicine Est. 1951

Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology Foundry

(OBO Foundry)

A collaborative framework of interoperable ontologies for the biological and biomedical sciences.

Technical Specification active OBO Foundry Est. 2007

SNOMED Clinical Terms

(SNOMED CT)

The world's most comprehensive clinical terminology, coding over 350,000 medical concepts.

Vocabulary / Thesaurus active SNOMED International Est. 1965