Big science, big data, and a big role for biomedical informatics

Abstract

The role of biomedical informatics in science has never been so prominent, and we strive to make this journal a vehicle for wide dissemination of the best biomedical informatics work well beyond our own field. This issue of the journal is dedicated to translational science enabled by informatics. It combines the topics of AMIA's Joint Summits on Translational Science—Translational Bioinformatics and Clinical Research Informatics—and presents the best articles from the conference, as well as several other related articles that have been submitted to JAMIA through the regular journal process. As the readers can verify, the outstanding quality of the articles selected from the conference make them indistinguishable from the regular articles. It was particularly exciting to work with our guest editors Nigam Shah, Michael Kahn, and Chunhua Weng to edit this special issue. This was true not only because we learned much from each other's perspectives, but also because JAMIA was able make its contribution to the success of the Joint Summits, by motivating authors to submit their best work to the conference for potential publication in the journal. As director of a biomedical informatics academic unit within a medical school, I appreciate that trainees and junior faculty have the option to submit their best papers for publication in conference proceedings, but may hesitate given the unequal weights assigned by promotion committees to proceedings and journal publications. On the other hand, everyone in our community wants to have an opportunity to see live presentations and interact with the authors who are producing the best work in our field. By inviting the best conference papers to be submitted to this special issue of the journal, we hope we are contributing to both these goals. As the readers will notice, even though the articles in this issue are categorized as primarily representing translational bioinformatics or clinical research informatics, these boundaries are fuzzy. Shah and Tenembaum (see page e2) describe how informatics analysis of Big Data has already started to be translated to the bedside and to influence patient outcomes. They describe how translational bioinformatics has bridged the gap between research and clinical practice, in ways that resemble how basic science discoveries have been translated into healthcare. With a strong, but not exclusive, focus on whole genome sequencing analysis, translational bioinformatics articles are increasingly appearing in JAMIA, reflecting the growth of a critical sub-specialty of informatics that is attracting a large number of new trainees to our field. Two of our prior issues (July 2011 and March 2012) were focused on translational bioinformatics and were very well received by our readers. Another one of our notable prior issues (December 2011) was focused on clinical research informatics. In this issue, Kahn and Weng (see page e36) propose a conceptual model to highlight how several articles relate to the translational continuum of basic research to clinical trials. As Kahn and Weng report, clinical research informatics' presence in JAMIA has experienced exponential growth, reflecting the growth of the consortium of Clinical and Translational Science Awards, and the recognition that, without informatics, it is not possible to implement ‘Big Science.’ Enjoy this issue and spread the word: biomedical informatics has a key role in Big Science, and Big Data. JAMIA has a big role in disseminating the scholarly work of our community.