Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Improving data and knowledge management to better integrate health care and researchOnce upon a time, several engineers, biologists and clinicians realized that a lot of information in biomedicine was partitioned into 'silos' that do not intercommunicate.These silos were a side effect of the existence of different disciplines required to, for example, develop new drugs.The engineers decided to dispose of the silos, and to put the information in axiomatic form to facilitate automatic reasoning over multiple data sources.They also decided to do this in a very open way so that effort was not duplicated.This seemed to be a very reasonable step and was welcomed by all.After much axiomatization, the engineers found that there were still issues.There was a lack of agreement on many seemingly uncomplicated 'facts'.They had to employ curators to resolve the issues, and then it was said that the curators were 'losing the plot'.They also found that there were not only 'discipline silos', but also 'intra-discipline silos'.The 'intra-discipline silos' were the partitions between the different evidences and between the assertions developed from the evidences and from earlier assertions, which were based on even earlier assertions, and so on.There were not only webs of disagreement, but also chains of error.And they found that connecting facts from various silos was not so uncomplicated after all, even after axiomatization.Why was this?Because the results of scientific experiments are not axioms, even if they may be treated in this way to perform isolated "bits of tasks" (T.W. Clark) (Fig. 1).This illustrates the challenge that scientists and clinical practitioners face: the world contains a vast array of complex and diverse data, but locating and connecting the information are difficult [1-3], and deriving definitive knowledge from the data to guide research and/or for clinical practice is even harder.Many barriers that make it difficult to progress in this field were recently discussed at a scientific meeting held in Barcelona from 3 July 2012 to 4 July 2012 [4] under the general title 'Beyond Omics Revolutions: Integrative Knowledge Management for Empowered Healthcare and Research'.The meeting focused on six topics: 'dealing with biomedical knowledge explosion for better healthcare: identifying actionable knowledge items at the point of care'; 'exploiting patient information to enrich basic biomedical research'; 'standards for clinical-omics integration: the semantic challenge'; 'new information technology (IT) is supporting massive biomedical data management'; 'systems medicine: making systems biology translational'; and 'integrative knowledge management for improving drug R&D'.The main ideas and conclusions arising from this event are presented below. Translating research findings into 'actionable' knowledge in the clinical settingNew biomedical discoveries emerge at an everincreasing rate, but their translation into health care typically occurs slowly or not at all.There is a lack of sufficient systems that can astutely identify, clarify and hand on these advances to the relevant practitioners, in usable formats.For example, thousands of biomarkers exist, comprising a few truly useful ones amongst many others that are less useful or nonactionable.Valuable new biomarkers (diagnostic, prognostic or therapeutic) are therefore not being advanced effectively into health care.The decision of which ones to progress with is simply too onerous, given the cost of modern clinical trials and a deficiency of incentives and expertise amongst researchers who would be best placed to advance markers into development.Hence, when this translation does occur, it is usually because of a major 'pull' from the clinical world, rather than a 'push' from researchers.
Source: Journal of Internal Medicine
DOI: 10.1111/joim.12105
Authors: M. Cases, L. I. Furlong, J. Albanell, R. B. Altman, R. Bellazzi, S. Boyer, A. Brand, A. J. Brookes, S. Brunak, T. W. Clark, J. Gea, P. Ghazal, N. Graf, R. Guigó, T. E. Klein, N. López‐Bigas, V. Maojo, B. Mons, M. Musen, J. L. Oliveira, A. Rowe, P. Ruch, A. Shabo, E. H. Shortliffe, A. Valencia, J. van der Lei, M. A. Mayer, F. Sanz
Institutions: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Hospital Del Mar, Stanford University, University of Pavia, AstraZeneca (Sweden), Maastricht University, University of Leicester, University of Copenhagen, Technical University of Denmark, Massachusetts General Hospital, Municipal Institute for Medical Research, University of Edinburgh, Saarland University, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre, Stanford Medicine, University of Aveiro, Janssen (United Kingdom), IBM Research - Haifa, Arizona State University, Columbia University, Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Erasmus MC
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $4,780
OpenAlex ID: W2136775759