Guest Editor's Commentary

Abstract

Canadian Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) professionals are collegial by nature, and have established interprofessional collaborations in rehabilitation and research. The advent of “Bioinformatics”, in its broadest sense, provides opportunity to leverage our collegial nature and willingness to work in interprofessional teams to define and deliver Optimal Care—that is both evidence-informed and customized to the individual, based on the unique impairments, neurorecovery, genetic makeup and physiology of each patient. Coupled with the individual's health status, personal drive, social supports and goals, evidence-informed rehabilitation is a game changer for optimizing quality of life. This special issue of The Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine and the associated 6th National Spinal Cord Injury Conference held October 2–4, 2014 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, are intended to prompt dialogue, controversy and collaboration to enable Bioinformatics’ data to routinely inform SCI Rehabilitation in the coming decade. Bioinformatics is a relatively new interdisciplinary field that has developed methods to assist with the coordination, integration, and analysis of large biological and clinical data sets. The development and maturity of large longitudinal datasets in Canada and internationally, represent an unprecedented opportunity for combining data across fields—including but not limited to epidemiology, computational science, biochemistry, pharmacology, biomedical engineering, genomics, rehabilitation science, architecture, and clinical outcome data. One can readily envision the multitude of opportunities afforded to our field through data linkage; particularly given the joint perils of a relatively rare condition and substantial impairment heterogeneity. As always, with progress there are anticipated challenges. One can readily envision challenges such as: lobbying for an adequate and sustained financial and staffing resource base to feed the bioinformatics pipeline and providing customized services across the continuum of care; keeping pace with evolving neuroprotective and neurorecovery discoveries; and establishing mechanisms for rapid cycles of discovery and service implementation. This is especially challenging when meaningful outcomes for individuals may require additional resources and innovative approaches to service delivery. Optimism regarding the future prospects for the field derived from Bioinformatics is warranted, provided it is accompanied by strong advocacy and strategic action. I wish to thank the Journal for supporting our vision for Bioinformatics through production and dissemination of this issue, and the honour of being guest editor. The work of many trainees, and the next generation of SCI scientists and clinicians are highlighted throughout this issue; we anticipate bioinformatics will influence their future career paths.