The goal of the BRIDG Project is to produce a shared view of the semantics of a common domain-of-interest, specifically the domain of basic, pre-clinical, clinical, and translational research and its associated regulatory artifacts.

The mission of BRIDG is to enable computable semantic interoperability (CSI), the ability for information systems to exchange, at a machine-to-machine level, the meaning (rather than simply the structure) of data and/or to effectively combine functionality across machine/system boundaries. A shared semantic view is essential if the clinical research community, both for itself and also as part of the larger healthcare and life sciences communities, is to achieve CSI in the various data interchanges and application interactions between systems.

This shared view can be used to:

• document information requirements before designing and building a solution.
• build the information structures in the solution.
• trace requirements throughout the solution development process.

In BRIDG, this shared view is expressed as a collection of visual diagrams using the iconography and grammar of the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This set of visual diagrams plus the underlying relationships, definitions, explanations, and examples are collectively referred to as the BRIDG Model. For a short introduction to UML, please see the BRIDG User Guide that is published with each release of the model.