The University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Marshfield Clinic both have decades of experience applying informatics to the problems of clinical trials and clinical care. Each brings different and complementary strengths to the proposed collaboration.
The ICTR Biomedical Informatics Resource (BMIR) provides ICTR members with consulting, collaboration and the development of new methods and technology to address their research problems. Members have access to senior BMIR faculty and staff with expertise in Bioinformatics, Genetics/Genomics, Image Analysis and Visualization, Clinical Informatics and Public Health Informatics. Currently BMIR faculty are conducting research in fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining. Applications of this research include gene sequencing, gene-chip technology, cancer diagnosis, and combinatorial pharmacology.
The Marshfield biomedical informatics resource, with the creation of the UW-Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), is expanding its translational informatics resources and offering them to a substantially greater percentage of the active research faculty who are Institute members.
Our approach is to provide limited short-term advice on informatics issues in the design, conduct, or analysis of studies but with a goal of becoming collaborators in the projects as they develop. Initial advice may be related to a pre-application activity or internal Institute review of general issues faced by an investigator. The consulting may also take the form of an informatics faculty member advising informatics staff, graduate students and/or post-docs in consultancy with a biomedical researcher.
BMIR also seeks collaborations between informatics and other disciplines. The philosophy of the collaborative research is that it begins with consultancies, and successful consultancies often turn into a collaborative experience, with the informatics faculty and staff an integral part of the research team. As the collaboration matures, it often becomes independently funded. However, not all problems that arise can be solved by existing methods and may not fit exactly into faculty’s independent research grant. Thus, some additional research efforts may be needed through methodological research grants. The Bioinformatics Informatics Resource will also continue to provide and expand education and training in these areas of Biomedical Informatics.
For additional information and to request a consultation, click on the links below.