1. A method for transforming unstructured text into structured data using a domain-specific ontology, the method comprising: recording a block of text using an information extraction module (IEM); discovering text phrases contained in the input block of text; retrieving unstructured text from a knowledge source using the IEM and the text phrase; retrieving lexical data from a knowledge source using the IEM and the text phrase; and processing each discovered text phrase using the IEM to thereby generate a plurality of nodes in the domain-specific ontology; wherein the plurality of nodes classifies the unstructured text to predetermined corresponding objects of interest, thereby transforming the unstructured text into the structured data, and wherein the domain-specific ontology defines an informativeness function that quantifies sub-phrases of the unstructured text by relative importance.