Abstract

Objective As biomedical technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, researchers can probe ever more subtle effects with the added requirement that the investigation of small effects often requires the acquisition of large amounts of data. In biomedicine, these data are often acquired at, and later shared between, multiple sites. There are both technological and sociological hurdles to be overcome for data to be passed between researchers and later made accessible to the larger scientific community. The goal of the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is to address the challenges inherent in biomedical data sharing.
Materials and methods BIRN tools are grouped into ‘capabilities' and are available in the areas of data management, data security, information integration, and knowledge engineering. BIRN has a user-driven focus and employs a layered architectural approach …

Date

July 1, 2011

Authors

Karl G Helmer, Jose Luis Ambite, Joseph Ames, Rachana Ananthakrishnan, Gully Burns, Ann L Chervenak, Ian Foster, Lee Liming, David Keator, Fabio Macciardi, Ravi Madduri, John-Paul Navarro, Steven Potkin, Bruce Rosen, Seth Ruffins, Robert Schuler, Jessica A Turner, Arthur Toga, Christina Williams, Carl Kesselman, Biomedical Informatics Research Network

Journal

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

Volume

18

Issue

4

Pages

416-422

Publisher

BMJ Group