Submitted on March 11, 2009
Revised on August 5, 2009
Accepted on September 1, 2009
Translational Informatics: Enabling High Throughput Research Paradigms
Philip Richard Orrin Payne1*, Peter J. Embi2, and Chandan K. Sen3
1 The Ohio State University
2 University of Cincinnati
3 Ohio State University Medical Center
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: philip.payne{at}osumc.edu.
A common thread throughout the clinical and translational research domains is the need to collect, manage, integrate, analyze, and disseminate large-scale, heterogeneous biomedical data sets. However, well-established and broadly adopted theoretical and practical frameworks and models intended to address such needs are conspicuously absent in the published literature or other reputable knowledge sources. Instead, the development and execution of multi-disciplinary, clinical or translational studies is significantly limited by the propagation of "silos" of both data and expertise. Motivated by this fundamental challenge, this manuscript reports upon the current state and evolution of biomedical informatics as it pertains to the conduct of high-throughput clinical and translational research, and will present both a conceptual and practical framework for the design and execution of informatics-enabled studies. The objective of providing such findings and constructs is to provide the clinical and translational research community with a common frame of reference for discussing and expanding upon such models and methodologies.
