what is informatics

Informatics is the process of collecting, managing and sharing information. In biomedical/healthcare research enormous amounts of information are generated each year. This information includes data generated in the lab, during trials of new drugs and from studies about the health of an entire population. Using informatics, this enormous volume of information can be stored more easily; shared amongst other researchers and doctors, used to make bigger, better analyses of the information and to guide future research. This will ultimately increase the benefit of research to patients and society as a whole by improving the delivery of healthcare and accelerating the discovery of new therapies and treatment approaches.

AIMS OF THE PROJECT

Informatics is now being recognised as having a major role to play in improving healthcare. Governments, industry and research charities are now making significant investments into developing informatics systems that will allow the data they collect to be used to its full potential.
            
With its partners, the NCRI Informatics Initiative is promoting and coordinating the research community in developing an informatics system that focuses initially on cancer and cancer research information. This informatics system will use computer technology to link many different sets of cancer related information and data from around the world and allow it to be searched and used easily and quickly. The intention is to then deploy this approach across all disease areas, opening up a wealth of ‘hidden’ information to the wider research community.

To achieve these above aims the Unit is focussing on the following deliverables:

1. Promoting the ongoing cultural change and training that is required to continue to increase the willingness of researchers to both share their information and understand how informatics benefits them and their research.
2. Facilitating the development of a consistent framework across the NCRI Partners of policies that provide both a requirement to share, with the credit for doing so, coupled to a set of conventions that govern re-use and citation of other’s work.
3. The promotion of standards, plus support and provision of easy access for researchers to annotate their information and tools using vocabularies* so as to clearly define what is being made available.
4. Promoting the ability to discover, browse and create new information sets from what resources already exist. Developing systems to allow researchers to understand the provenance of such resources through their ability to visualise the publications and citations that have been generated from it.
5. The “connection” of existing resources and informatics initiatives by the promotion of increased levels of interoperability between these ‘information islands’, the ultimate goal being to form an informatics system through the creation of a ‘network of networks’ at a national and international level.

* a ‘vocabulary’ is a standardised structure for recording data and information in a consistent way to allow it to be easily understood by other researchers, electronic systems etc.

Medical Advice

Unfortunately it is outside our remit to provide medical advice or information on specific treatments for cancer. For information on what options are available for the treatment of cancer please visit the following:

• CancerHelp UK, the patient information website of Cancer Research UK;
  
• Cancer Back-Up, the UK’s leading cancer information site which provides up-to-date information, practical advice and support for cancer patients, their families and carers;
  

Clinical Trials

Clinical trials are voluntary research studies, conducted in healthy volunteers and/or patients, to assess the safety and efficacy of new drugs or devices.

We do not hold any information on specific clinical trials for patients. For more information about clinical trials and how to take part in them please visit:

• CancerHelp UK, provides information on UK trials, or international trials held on by organizations that have a UK center;
• NCI/PDQ, provides information on trials that are mainly accruing patients at sites in the United States and on some that are accruing at sites in either Canada or Europe.