NCATS Announces New National Center for Data to Health

The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences has announced a $25 million, five year award that will establish the National Center for Data to Health (CD2H) within the CTSA Program. The new center will focus on creating and harnessing an ecosystem for translational scientists to discover and share their software, data and other research resources within the CTSA Program network.

The new CTSA Program National Center for Data to Health will be led by Melissa Haendel, Ph.D., Oregon Health & Science University; Kristi Holmes, Ph.D., Northwestern University; Sean Mooney, Ph.D., University of Washington; Christopher Chute, M.D., Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine; and John Wilbanks, Sage Bionetworks. The Data to Health Coordination Center grant, which supports the new center, has been awarded to these institutions, together with The Scripps Research Institute, Washington University in St. Louis, The University of Iowa, and The Jackson Laboratory.

The new center will be tasked with several priorities to support a vibrant and evolving informatics ecosystem, including:

  • support and enhancement of a collaborative informatics community;
  • development of Good Data Practices (GDP);
  • promotion of software standards for interoperability;
  • growth of collaborative innovation across informatics tools, methods, and processes;
  • advancement of cutting edge biomedical research informatics;
  • data science education for CTSA Program researchers; and
  • novel methods and tools for the evaluation of the impact of these activities to enhance health care through data and informatics.

CD2H also creates a social coding environment for translational science institutions, leveraging the community-driven DREAM challenges as a mechanism to stimulate innovation. Collaborative innovation also serves as a strong foundation to support mechanisms to facilitate training, engagement, scholarly dissemination, and impact across the CTSA Program hubs and beyond.

The center PIs will work with the Informatics Domain Task Force and will participate in the Fall CTSA Program Meeting in Washington, DC this October. The CD2H will work closely with the CTSA Program Coordinating Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration (CLIC) and with NCATS to launch their program and welcomes feedback from CTSA Program hubs as they do so.

You can follow @Data2Health on Twitter and join the conversation with #CD2H.

The CTSA Program National Center for Data to Health is supported by the Data to Health Coordination Center Award number U24TR002306 from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health

From CLIC Content: https://clic-ctsa.org/content/ncats-announces-new-national-center-data-health