Research Informatics.org

I wanted to take this new posting as an opportunity to comment on the artificial barriers that seems to be defining the pursuit of translational science in general, and more specifically, translational research informatics. So, what do I mean by artificial barriers? Well, if we look at the defining literature and prevailing models in the translational research domain, significant emphasis is placed on the T1 and T2 barriers (from lab to clinical research, and clinical research to practice, respectively). These barriers sub-divide the translational paradigm into three major components: 1) basic science; 2) clinical research; and 3) clinical practice / public health. If one reads the RFAs for federal funding opportunities that target the clinical and translational sciences as issued over the past several years, these sub-divisions have been reinforced, with requirements for such funding and associated projects to focus on the creation and validation of approaches to “breaking down the barriers” between such areas. The problem, however, is whether we are imposing a completely artificial model to conveniently break down the translational paradigm into “manageable” sub-components. For example, when defining new basic science protocols, it is rare for a translational researcher to not inform the design of his or her experiments in part based upon observations or previous work derived from clinical studies, practice, or the population sciences (for example, a scientist defining a protocol looking at certain bio-marker complexes in animal-based disease models might choose to focus on surrogate end-points or outcomes metrics that correspond to the human manifestation of the targeted disease). While a complete enumeration of the scenarios in which the sub-domains I have listed are more interrelated that the barriers between them would appear to suggest is too onerous to include in this post, I think the general idea is sufficiently clear. So what are the implications of these barriers? simply put, if we step back and look at the highly interrelated nature of the translational and clinical sciences, and our emphasis on “breaking down barriers”, one has to wonder whether we are attempting to fix a problem of our own creation, which is in effect a result of our own efforts to simplify a very complex system. If this is the case, perhaps we are missing the true opportunities to enhance translational science via the optimization of the interrelationships which already exist, rather than trying to catalyze new interrelationships that may not necessarily be needed. This might be an over simplified view of what is truly a complex system and problem, but certainly some food for thought when so many of us in the translational informatics domain are focused on effecting “transformative” change in our organizations - which begs the question, what are we trying to change exactly?