IBIS: A Collaborative Biomedical Informatics Infrastructure for Translational Research

Abstract

IBIS: A Collaborative Biomedical Informatics Infrastructure for Translational Research Yang C. Fann Director, IT and Bioinformatics Program, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA ? The conventional approach of supporting bioinformatics informatics for translational research has been focusing on the development of infrastructures and tools for data capture, management and analysis.? With current trend of interdisciplinary research, different approaches of integrating and sharing diverse and heterogeneous meta-genomics data and clinical phenotype data through research networks or collaboration have been explored with aims to advance bench-to-bedside research.? However, with limited funding and resources on top of complexities in governance and policy, most of the informatics tool development projects for translational research are not sustainable or scalable not to mention transferable or reusable beyond their own organization. The Integrated Biomedical Informatics System (IBIS) is a collaborative project that breaks organizational barriers and combines resources and funding from multiple institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) along with the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine (CNRM) and Department of Defense (DOD) to build a reusable and sustainable informatics infrastructure to support and catalyze biomedical research. The project was built based on existing applications and tools at NIH for scientific administration, clinical information management and data repository (or data warehouse) with additional supporting tools such as common data elements, global unique identifiers, and data validations. The IBIS project is aimed to be transferable and scalable across different research networks and?? The strategy of synergizing various tools and resources to build new sustainable informatics infrastructures will be presented.