In addition to investing in portfolio companies and supporting community initiatives, CommerceNet has funded a number of projects.
The projects utilize the Internet to introduce novel approaches to long-standing problems in healthcare, Internet security, and other fields.
Some of our current endeavors include:
National Center for Biomedical Ontology
CommerceNet and Stanford University collaborated on research into biomedical concept modeling and language understanding at the National Center for Biomedical Ontology. The Center supports biomedical researchers in their knowledge-intensive work, providing online tools and a Web portal that enable them to access, review, and integrate disparate ontological resources in all aspects of biomedical investigation and clinical practice. The Center’s efforts complement the strategic direction at CollabRx, CommerceNet’s latest portfolio company, and are being used in the company’s current endeavors.
Science Commons
Science Commons designs strategies and tools for faster, more efficient Web-enabled scientific research. The organization identifies unnecessary barriers to research, crafts policy guidelines and legal agreements to lower those barriers, and develops technology to make research data and materials easier to find and use. The goal: speed the translation of data into discovery—unlocking the value of research so more people can benefit from the work scientists are doing.
Health Commons
Science Commons and CommerceNet, together with the Public Library of Science and CollabRx, collaborated on a project to transform drug discovery—a collaborative ecosystem of knowledge and research services called Health Commons.
Health Commons is a coalition of parties interested in changing the way basic science is translated into the understanding and improvement of human health. Coalition members agree to share data, knowledge, and services under standardized terms and conditions by committing to a set of common technologies, digital information, principals, research materials, contracts, workflows, and software. These commitments ensure that knowledge, data, materials, and tools can move seamlessly from partner to partner across the entire drug discovery chain. This, in turn, enables participants to offer standardized services (ranging from simple molecular assays to complex drug synthesis) in directories that others can discover and integrate into their own processes to expedite development—or assemble like LEGO blocks to create new services.