The Need for caBIG^®

The 21st century has begun with an explosion of new knowledge in the life sciences, offering the potential to transform our approach to wellness, disease, and healthcare management. Known as personalized or molecular medicine, this new approach aims to deliver the most appropriate treatment to each patient’s unique biology.

However, molecular-based research is generating vast amounts of complex genetic data, and there is a need to integrate this information with separate and distinct clinical data. Furthermore, this research is based on disparate document and data formats, making it difficult to leverage in meaningful ways.

Research advances and clinical improvements face the following challenges:

• A huge and growing volume of data – including genomic and proteomic information – that must be collected, analyzed, and made accessible
• A multitude of "legacy" or previously developed information systems, most of which cannot be readily shared between institutions. Many of these systems continue to be paper-based, rather than electronic
• An absence of common data formats
• Few common vocabularies, making it difficult, if not impossible, to interlink diverse research and clinical results
• An absence of tools to connect different databases
• Difficulty in identifying and accessing available resources, such as biospecimens and reagents
• An absence of information infrastructure to share data within an institution, or among different institutions

caBIG^® has been developed to address the information challenges that prevent or slow the adoption of molecular medicine.