UC San Diego nets $25M in biomedical informatics grants
Researchers at the University of California, (UC) San Diego School of Medicine, led by Lucila Ohno-Machado, MD, PhD, chief of the division of biomedical informatics in the department of medicine, have received two federal grants totaling more than $25 million to develop ways to gather, analyze, use and share vast amounts of biomedical information.
The first grant, for $16.7 million over five years, will create a center for biomedical computing called iDASH. The center will be charged with developing algorithms, open-source tools and computational infrastructure and services so that scientists can share anonymized data essential to large-scale studies. Funding comes from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; the National Human Genome Research Institute; the National Library of Medicine; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; and the common fund from the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
iDASH, which stands for Integrating Data for Analysis, Anonymization and Sharing, is one of five National Centers for Biomedical Computing awarded in this funding cycle. Other centers are at Columbia University in New York City; Brigham and Women's Hospital (an academic center affiliated with Harvard Medical School) in Boston; and Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. iDASH was the only new center awarded by the NIH in a competitive process that involved proposals from seven existing centers, plus a large number of other aspiring institutions.
According to Ohno-Machado, iDASH will not only be a resource to share privacy-protected data, but also will coordinate talent from several departments, organized research units and schools at UC San Diego, catalyzing the integration of quantitative and biomedical/behavioral sciences across campus, with involvement of multiple researchers from the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Engineering.
The other research grant is for $8.3 million over three years and will fund the establishment of the Scalable National Network for Effectiveness Research (SCANNER), which will seek to integrate data from healthcare systems with iDASH. SCANNER, led by Ohno-Machado, will create certified computational systems and architecture necessary to exchange health information collected at the point of care, so that the same data can be used for comparative effectiveness research.
The first grant, for $16.7 million over five years, will create a center for biomedical computing called iDASH. The center will be charged with developing algorithms, open-source tools and computational infrastructure and services so that scientists can share anonymized data essential to large-scale studies. Funding comes from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; the National Human Genome Research Institute; the National Library of Medicine; the National Institute of General Medical Sciences; and the common fund from the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health.
iDASH, which stands for Integrating Data for Analysis, Anonymization and Sharing, is one of five National Centers for Biomedical Computing awarded in this funding cycle. Other centers are at Columbia University in New York City; Brigham and Women's Hospital (an academic center affiliated with Harvard Medical School) in Boston; and Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. iDASH was the only new center awarded by the NIH in a competitive process that involved proposals from seven existing centers, plus a large number of other aspiring institutions.
According to Ohno-Machado, iDASH will not only be a resource to share privacy-protected data, but also will coordinate talent from several departments, organized research units and schools at UC San Diego, catalyzing the integration of quantitative and biomedical/behavioral sciences across campus, with involvement of multiple researchers from the Schools of Medicine, Pharmacy and Engineering.
The other research grant is for $8.3 million over three years and will fund the establishment of the Scalable National Network for Effectiveness Research (SCANNER), which will seek to integrate data from healthcare systems with iDASH. SCANNER, led by Ohno-Machado, will create certified computational systems and architecture necessary to exchange health information collected at the point of care, so that the same data can be used for comparative effectiveness research.