Year: 2011
Type: editorial
Abstract: The joint summits on translational science: Crossing the translational chasm From its beginnings nearly 60 years ago, the field that soon became known as ''medical informatics'' focused on the harnessing of computational and information science approaches, as well as socio-technical frameworks, in order to improve the quality, safety, and outcomes of clinical care.With the emergence of bioinformatics as a formal area of research approximately 30 years later, the biomedical and life sciences enterprises became positioned to gain deeper understanding of the underpinning phenomena associated with disease.The amalgamation of bioinformatics and medical informatics, formally becoming termed ''biomedical informatics'', suggested that there was a continuum of concepts that spanned from wetbench research to bedside medicine.The major thrust in research in biomedical informatics was thus to support a wide range of practitioners as they sought both to ask and answer complex questions spanning the biological, clinical, or public health domains.In many ways, biomedical informatics shifted from hypothesis-generation research to developing approaches to support the testing of specific biomedical hypotheses.By the early part of the 21st century, the scope and pace of foundational biomedical research was increasing rapidly, largely spurred on by the completion of the $2.7B Human Genome Project.Innovations in bioinformatics complemented by significant technological advances quickly helped the research community contemplate high-throughput 'omics' studies that would realize the promise of employing the blueprint of life in order to foster a new generation of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.In a complementary manner, the clinical research community began to contemplate the necessary infrastructure and methodological innovations needed to bring bench-side innovations into the clinic in a more timely and efficient manner.Such emerging lines of research and development were largely motivated by the emergence of the United States' National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, which included specific objectives surrounding the ''re-engineering'' of the clinical research enterprise.These ''re-engineering'' efforts ultimately evolved into the launch of the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program.Funded by the NIH through its National Center for Research Resources (and now via a new proposed Center that will focus on translational science), and ultimately seeking to identify and engage a nationwide network of 60 sites, the CTSA initiative focuses on creating academic and scholarly homes with accompanying infrastructure, services, and workforce development programs.The program is intended to catalyze rapid improvements in the state of clinical and translational research knowledge and practice and to decrease the time between basic science discoveries and the implementation of their clinical implications in routine practice.Given an increasing appreciation by the biomedical informatics community that research in bioinformatics and clinical informatics
Authors: Indra Neil Sarkar, Philip R.O. Payne
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,410
OpenAlex ID: W2083101043