WRI and SCBIT Collaborate in Translational Medicine Research
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Windber Research Institute (WRI) has entered a strategic arrangement with the Shanghai Center for Bioinformation Technology (SCBIT) to jointly develop data integration, data visualization, and data mining technologies for translational medicine research.
Both institutes expressed a joint vision towards global standardization of data warehousing to support translational medicine based clinical decision-making.
Both institutes have been actively involved in developing strategic relationships with other institutes of similar visions throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, and both institutes are interested in establishing an international consortium on translational medicine and technology development.
The WRI Biomedical Informatics team, headed by Dr. Hai Hu, will work closely with the SCBIT headed by Prof. Dr. Yixue Li on the issues of common interests as described above.
WRI is involved in clinical studies and clinical trials through an existing relationship with the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the Clinical Breast Care Program.
With breast cancers as the initial focus, WRI is developing a translational medicine research infrastructure with components of clinical data tracking, high throughput experiment data tracking, data warehousing, data visualization, data analysis and data mining applications, both by the institute itself and with its partner organizations.
The infrastructure in development is designed to be of a generalized nature so that it can be readily applicable to the study of other diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, gynecological diseases, and obesity that are also subjects of study in the institute.
"We are glad to team up with a top bioinformatics institute in China. We highly value the complementary strengths SCBIT possesses," said Dr. Michael N. Liebman, Executive Director of WRI.
"They have a big pool of talented young scientists and developers, with proven capability shown in their genomic research in SARS, as well as in the development of their LIMS and data warehouse."
"The level of the support they receive from the city and the country is extremely impressive."
"In addition, the scope of medical research in China differs from that here in the USA, which is a potential advantage in translational medicine research."
"Our common goal is to develop a biomedical informatics technology highway such that translational medicine research for different diseases can be done more systemically and efficiently, which will definitely do good to the patients and help reduce healthcare costs."
"This strategic relationship will greatly benefit both organizations," said Prof. Dr. Yixue Li, Director of SCBIT.
"We have had extensive communications on what the two organizations are doing, and found that we share a lot of common ground, with strengths complementary to each other."
"In fact, through our common third partner InforSense, we have been working together on the WRI data warehouse development project."
"Now that a direct relationship is established between us, I expect nothing less than a highly synergic collaboration in the research and technology development for translational medicine."
