With respect to the information technology required for a successful completion of the project, the emphasis lies on information/knowledge sharing and reuse techniques. These will be necessary to enable the exchange of information and knowledge between individual studies, applications and tools. This technology has been developed in both European and US projects. It is precisely this sharing and reusing technology that gives the tools developed in HC-REMA its added-value over existing systems.
In Europe, ESPRIT Project 8145 KACTUS is developing a methodology for sharing and reusing technical ontologies. The methodological basis for this project is provided by the de facto standard developed for knowledge-intensive applications in the ESPRIT context (ESPRIT project 5248 KADS-II) [14]. The European AIM project GAMES-II (1992-1994) [13] has put particular emphasis on sharing and reusing medical knowledge.
Relevant is also the US DARPA Knowledge Sharing Effort [12]. It addresses the problem of sharing and reuse of existing systems through the study and development of four basic technologies:
The partners in HC-REMA have intimate knowledge of these sharing and reuse techniques, and are able to make this expertise available to the project.