Future Directions in Clinical Research Informatics

Abstract

Given the rapid advances in biomedical science, the growth of the human population, and the escalating costs of health care, the need to accelerate the pace of biomedical discoveries and their translation into health-care practice will continue to grow. Indeed, the need for more efficient and effective support of clinical research to enable the development, evaluation, and implementation of cost-effective therapies is more important now than ever before. Furthermore, the fundamentally information-intensive nature of such clinical research endeavors and the growth in both health technology adoption and health-related data available for interventions and analytics beg for the solutions offered by CRI. As a result, the demand for informatics professionals who focus on the increasingly important field of clinical and translational research will increase. Despite the progress made to date, new models, tools, and approaches will be needed to fully leverage and mine these digital assets and improve CRI practice, and this innovation will continue to drive the field forward in the coming years.