The National Cancer Institute's cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) Initiative:  Enabling the Exchange and Integration of Diverse Biomedical Data Through Interoperable Infrastructure and Tools

Mary Jo Deering, National Cancer Institute Center for Bioinformatics; U.S. National Institutes of Health, US

The Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™ or caBIG™ is a virtual informatics infrastructure that connects data, research tools, scientists and institutions to leverage the combined strengths and expertise in an open environment with common standards.  caBIG develops tools in a collaborative effort through a community of clinical experts, scientists and informaticists from academia and government agencies, and representatives from standards development organizations and industry.  Over 800 individuals from 80 organizations are currently collaborating; participation is open to anyone in the public or private sectors.  caBIG tools and infrastructure, which are based on a shared vocabulary, shared data elements and shared data models,  enable the seamless exchange of information and distributed queries. An open community process is used to maintain and extend these semantic resources. The caBIG test bed currently supports basic and translational research, clinical trials research, in vivo imaging, and tissue banking and pathology. 

This presentation will describe key caBIG activities and the caBIG interoperability guidelines; the presentation will also describe how individuals and organizations outside the cancer research community can contribute to and benefit from caBIG.  


Keywords: biomedical informatics; e-Science