Director's Note
Two weeks from today, the caBIG® community will gather from across the United States and internationally for our sixth Annual Meeting. It is hard to believe that so much time has elapsed since our inception, and that so much has been transformed, both in the outside world and inside our novel community.
What has changed over these few short years?
Data sharing used to be a challenge in biomedicine. Today, it is on the lips of every investigator, every CIO, and every provider, and discussed in every industry conference.
Standards-based interoperability used to be a foreign concept for biomedicine. Today, it is the prerequisite for any large-scale endeavor in discovery research and clinical care.
Data liquidity used to be a "techie" term that no researcher knew or cared about. Today, it is where the rubber meets the road for all researchers seeking speed and efficiency gains in the 21st century.
In 2003, caBIG® was surely ahead of its time…but happily, what we fought for then is becoming totally routine, embraced by academic medical centers, policy organizations such as the Institute of Medicine, and government agencies such as the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. The "pioneering" aspects of caBIG® interoperability are now so widespread as to be taken for granted.
Are we finished? Certainly not. In 2010, we are forging ahead to develop the next generation of technology (caBIG® 2.0) by which our community will sustain information exchange in a new world of digitally-enabled research and care. A major component of this effort is caGrid 2.0, the foundational infrastructure for caBIG®-interoperable applications. This new iteration will continue to support the current community of users and their data, while creating a working environment that is more accessible and will be used by all stakeholders—including scientists, clinicians, patients, consumers, and technologists. More information on this game-changing phase is featured in this issue, and will be discussed in many sessions at the upcoming Annual Meeting.
Many, many challenges lie ahead of us. I look forward to our invigorating discussions in September, and to another era of pioneering community-based efforts, always at the "bleeding edge" of biomedicine.
Best regards,
Ken Buetow