Defining Translational Research Informatics (TRI)
The domain of translational research informatics is by most accounts in its early and formative stages - which presents a unique opportunity to academics and professional in the informatics community to define this timely and very critical field. However, that same opportunity also presents a challenge, due to the fact that a common perspective concerning what precisely constitutes the practice and definition of translational research informatics, or as I often refer to it in a simpler form, translational informatics, is generally lacking. Therefore, since this is the first of what I hope will be many posts to come on this new blog, entitled “Translational Research Informatics”, I thought I would take this opportunity to present one potential definition of the field that I, and a number of colleagues from AMIA (including my close collaborator, Dr. Peter Embi from the University of Cincinnati) have discussed over the past several months, and that we have posted to that ultimate of Internet knowledge repositories, Wikipedia (Translational Research Informatics). Our current working definition of translational informatics as found on Wikipedia, reads as follows: Translational Research Informatics (TRI) is the sub-domain of Biomedical informatics or Medical Informatics concerned with the application of informatics theory and methods to translational research. It overlaps considerably with the related rapidly developing domain of Clinical Research Informatics. Translational research as defined by the National Institutes of Health includes two areas of translation. One is the process of applying discoveries generated during research in the laboratory, and in preclinical studies, to the development of trials and studies in humans. The second area of translation concerns research aimed at enhancing the adoption of best practices in the community. Cost-effectiveness of prevention and treatment strategies is also an important part of translational science. Another way to look at the discipline of translational informatics is to visualize the major areas that must contribute to our collective ability to generate translational biomedical knowledge (which is concerned with understanding and acting upon the meaningful relationships between biological knowledge, clinical research/practice, and the population sciences). I have developed one such visualization, which I refer to as the “Translational Informatics Triad.” I have included the preceding definition as static-content on this blog to help guide readers who are new to the field. However, I fully anticipate that the definition will evolve over time, given our collective increased understanding of the field, as well as the specific comments I hope readers of this blog will contribute.