The National Institutes of Health is asking for the life science community's help to develop training programs as part of an initiative to develop a common data-sharing framework for large biomedical datasets called Big Data to Knowledge, or BD2K.
The NIH issued a request for information this week asking for help in planning a workshop that will address "the long- and short-term training needs of professionals and trainees."
NIH hopes to increase the number of "informaticians and computational and quantitative scientists who wish to apply their skills and knowledge in the biomedical, behavioral and clinical sciences" and the number of "biomedical, behavioral, and clinical scientists who have the requisite knowledge and skills to effectively access, organize, analyze, and integrate large and complex data sets."
The RFI is open through March 15, 2013. NIH is asking specifically for information about "programmatic enhancements that are needed to develop, foster, and maintain a diverse research workforce cross-trained in the areas specified." It will accept responses from graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, scientists, clinicians, scientific societies, NIH grantee institutions, and industry.
The BD2K initiative is the result of a series of recommendations made by the data and informatics working group of the NIH's Advisory Committee to the Director that called on the NIH to revisit the informatics infrastructure it has in place for managing and sharing biomedical information including genomics, imaging, and electronic health records data (BI 14/2012).