BETHESDA, Md., June 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Board of Directors, in support of its strategic plan, has approved the development of an annual meeting that will explore topics related to translational bioinformatics. To reflect the growth of novel approaches in genomic medicine and biomedicine at the intersection of clinical care and to better serve its growing member population of translational scientists, AMIA recently added translational bioinformatics as one of its three major strategic domains. This effort, which complements initiatives in comparative medicine within the scientific community, will provide a platform to share innovative research processes that are transforming health care and will strengthen the clinical research enterprise.
“AMIA looks forward to sponsoring its inaugural research meeting focused totally on research in Translational Bioinformatics,” says Don E. Detmer, MD, President and CEO. He continues, “AMIA became aware from conversations with experts in this domain that the pace of discovery and growth in this emerging field has outstripped current meeting capabilities. This particular meeting will help ‘personalized’ care take on a whole new level of meaning and benefit the AMIA community and health care as a whole.”
AMIA Board Director, Atul Butte, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in Medicine (Medical Informatics) and Pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, and a board-certified pediatric endocrinologist, will lead the meeting as the Scientific Program Committee chair. Dr. Butte’s laboratory focuses on solving problems relevant to genomic medicine by developing new methodologies in translational bioinformatics. He has authored more than 25 publications in bioinformatics, medical informatics, and molecular diabetes and has delivered more than 35 presentations worldwide on bioinformatics, including nine at the National Institutes of Health or NIH-sponsored meetings.
“Translational Bioinformatics is a new sub-discipline and domain within biomedical informatics. In 2005, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Director of the NIH, wrote that ‘At no other time has the need for a robust, bidirectional information flow between basic and translational scientists been so necessary.’ Clearly evident in Dr. Zerhouni’s quote is the role biomedical informatics needs to play in facilitating translational medicine,” said Butte. “As translational bioinformatics is now one of AMIA’s major domains of informatics, I am pleased that AMIA will work to build the first national annual meeting for the presentation and discussion of research work in this field, and am proud that AMIA is reaching out to clinical, genomics, and bioinformatics investigators.”
The summit will provide a forum to showcase research-related issues among the nationwide initiatives on translational research informatics, such as CTSA, caBIG, NCBC, and others. In addition, the meeting will bring together leaders in the field to create a framework for developing, deploying, and assessing translational bioinformatics initiatives. We anticipate that non- research issues relating to translational bioinformatics and clinical research informatics will continue to be part of the Spring Congress and Annual Symposium.
“With the rapidly emerging and highly visible role of translational bioinformatics as a central component of our national biomedical research enterprise, the opportunities for AMIA and its membership to assume a leadership role in this critical area are significant,” comments Philip R. Payne, MD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Ohio State University. “AMIA’s recent approval of its third annual meeting, which will focus on the topic of translational bioinformatics, is a clear indicator of the Association’s strong commitment to serve as the professional home for practitioners in this domain and as a premier venue for reporting advances in the state of translational research.”
The summit will take place March 12-15, 2008 at the Hilton San Francisco in San Francisco, California. A call for participation and program will be announced in the near future. For more information about AMIA’s translational bioinformatics activities, visit the AMIA web site at: http://www.amia.org.
Contact: Tia Abner 301-657-1291 ext. 105 tia@amia.org
About AMIA
The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) is a professional organization of leaders shaping the future of biomedical and health informatics in the United States and over 50 other nations. AMIA is dedicated to the development and application of informatics in support of patient care, public health, teaching, research, administration, and related policy. Complete information about AMIA is available at: http://www.amia.org.
American Medical Informatics Association
CONTACT: Tia Abner of American Medical Informatics Association,+1-301-657-1291 ext. 105, tia@amia.org
Web site: http://www.amia.org/
