Network-Enhanced Collaboration in Biomedical Technology Centers

Bret Peterson, Ph.D.

Biomedical Informatics Research Network, Project Officer National Center
for Research Resources, NIH

 The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) Biomedical Technology Division supports seventy centers for the development of cutting-edge biomedical technology. These centers are charged not only with pushing forward their technologies through the work of investigators within the center and through collaborations with researchers around the world, but also with distributing access to the newly developed resources (technology and expertise) to anyone who can make use of them to further biomedical research. As biological questions and technology have increased in complexity, new initiatives have been supported by NCRR that foster collaboration between the centers by making use of high-speed networking capabilities. These include early collaboratory efforts that resulted in a number of cooperative approaches including remote access to large, expensive pieces of equipment. More recently, the BIRN (Biomedical Informatics Research Network) initiative has created consortiums of biomedical technology and clinical research centers that are working together to address two fundamental biomedical research issues: 1) integrating data across modalities and scales; and 2) merging difficult to acquire data with heterogeneous collection attributes from multiple research sites. These initiatives are considered only first steps in creating the infrastructure to support the synergistic approaches that will be necessary to solve the most challenging biomedical problems that we face.