Biomedical Informatics Program (BIP)

Having successfully established the infrastructure and governance for cohort discovery spanning multiple regional partners, and ways to provision research data, the Biomedical Informatics Program (BIP) looks to the next logical step: helping people use contemporary computational methods on data to improve healthcare. Tackling this challenge requires us to engage the continuum of stakeholders (researchers, clinicians, policy makers), educating as well as offering new services enabling agile, data-driven approaches to be tested and rolled out.

Services & Tools

Patient counts

Medical record datasets

Data releases

Program Aims

Aim 1. Enhance researchers' access to high-quality patient data

BIP will further investigators’ ability to identify research cohorts, ensuring querying/sharing for NCATS programs, including Accrual to Clinical Trials (ACT) and the Trial Innovation Network (TIN); and make available new data types. Across our Hub we will evolve secure environments and tools for linkage, discovery and navigation of data alongside organized CTSI-wide expertise supporting its use.

Expand patient data access.
Enrich data mapping and normalization.
Enable universal ID (UIDs). Enhance consultations.

Aim 2. Facilitate reproducible data-driven science

The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recently discussed the problem of biomedical scientific reproducibility and replicability, with implications for DS/AI computational approaches. We will develop an informatics platform and governance policies to foster sharing and reproducibility of data-driven methods and analyses.

Create a FAIR results repository.
Encourage sharing and reuse.

Aim 3. Translate DS and AI into practice

We will advance the use of these computational methods by coalescing interdisciplinary expertise and by establishing active testbeds for projects, addressing the “last mile” of translation and socio-technological issues through implementation science.

Provide training.
Test and operationalize DS/AI methods.

Developments and experiences from Aims 1-3 will be shared with CD2H and aligned with NIH initiatives, including uptake of FAIR and HL7 FHIR standards. Importantly, BIP’s efforts integrate across all CTSI Programs.

Upcoming projects

BIP seeks to create a unique website for researchers to know which data sets have been developed – and how to connect with those who created or can provide access or knowledge on that data.