2008 AMIA Summit on Translational Bioinformatics
InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco
San Francisco, California
March 10-12, 2008
http://www.amia.org/meetings/stb08/

In 2005, Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Director of the National Institutes of
Health (NIH), wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine:

"It is the responsibility of those of us involved in today's
biomedical research enterprise to translate the remarkable scientific
innovations we are witnessing into health gains for the nation... At
no other time has the need for a robust, bidirectional information
flow between basic and translational scientists been so necessary."

In that publication, Dr. Zerhouni introduced his ideas to re-engineer
the way clinical research was performed in the United States. With the
doubling of the NIH budget in the past decade, and coincident
completion of the Human Genome Project, there is a perceived need to
translate products of the genome era into products for clinical care.
The push to reinvent clinical research culminated in the release of
the NIH Roadmap Request for Applications (RFA) for Institutional
Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA). Twelve academic
health centers were awarded during the first round of funding. Clearly
evident in Dr. Zerhouni's quote is the role biomedical informatics
needs to play in facilitating translational medicine. Indeed, the RFA
for the CTSA itself mentions the term "informatics" more than thirty
times.

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) recently added
Translational Bioinformatics as one of its three major domains of
informatics. AMIA defines Translational Bioinformatics as:

"the development of storage, analytic, and interpretive methods to
optimize the transformation of increasingly voluminous biomedical data
into proactive, predictive, preventative, and participatory health.
Translational bioinformatics includes research on the development of
novel techniques for the integration of biological and clinical data
and the evolution of clinical informatics methodology to encompass
biological observations. The end product of translational
bioinformatics is newly found knowledge from these integrative efforts
that can be disseminated to a variety of stakeholders, including
biomedical scientists, clinicians, and patients."

While the call for translational bioinformaticians was issued by none
other than the Director of the NIH, and while translational
bioinformatics is now one of AMIA's major domains of informatics,
currently there is no national annual conference or symposium for the
presentation and discussion of research work in Translational
Bioinformatics.

This will change in 2008 with the inaugural Summit on Translational
Bioinformatics conducted by the American Medical Informatics
Association. We will leverage AMIA's proficiency in managing large
events, but I can also promise the dissemination and sharing of
knowledge at this event will in many ways look unlike a traditional
AMIA meeting with the presentation of research showcasing the synergy
between the medical informatics and bioinformatics communities. While
we anticipate that non-research issues relating to translational
bioinformatics and clinical research informatics will be a continuing
part of the Spring Congress and Annual Symposium, the deficiency
exists for an American conference covering the entire domain of
bioinformatics and computational biology. Here we endeavor to hold a
summit covering the more specific and tractable need of Translational
Bioinformatics, which is more directly relevant to the interests of
AMIA.

I would like to invite the submission of manuscripts including
scientific papers, posters, and panels. The specifications for each
category follow. The deadline for submission is Monday, September 17,
2007. We will publish a Proceedings of the summit and will upload the
accepted peer-reviewed papers into PubMedCentral.

I do hope you will save the dates of March 10-12, 2008 and plan to
travel to San Francisco, California, to attend what we believe will be
the first of many meetings with a singular focus on translational
bioinformatics.

Sincerely,

Atul Butte, MD, PhD

Categories of Submission The types of submissions considered and
general requirements for each are listed on these pages. All
submissions must conform to the format and presentation requirements
described herein, and at the AMIA submission site. Visit www.amia.org
and select the submission link for the Summit on Translational
Bioinformatics 2008.

Papers
The Scientific Program Committee (SPC) solicits papers on the latest
progress on using informatics approaches to improve translational
biomedical research. Authors of accepted papers will have 15 minutes
to present their work at the symposium with five minutes for questions
and discussion. An individual may be a first author of only one paper
submitted for consideration. Submissions must not be in press or under
consideration for presentation or publication elsewhere. Paper
submissions must not exceed a maximum of five (8.5 x 11 inch) pages
and must include:


    * An abstract of 125-150 words

    * The names, academic degree(s), affiliations, and locations
      (city, state, and country, if international) of all authors

Posters
Posters are the preferred format for presenting preliminary research
results or results of small scale studies, illustrating and discussing
innovative systems and services, describing experimental and
in-practice projects and programs, reporting experiences with
educational programs, and other dimensions of translational
bioinformatics. Poster sessions are a component of the summit designed
to offer direct access to the authors in a way not possible through
podium presentations.

Each accepted poster is displayed during a 90-minute poster session.
At least one author must be present at the poster session. Electrical
power is not supplied to individual posters at the time of the
presentation. An individual may be a first author of only one proposal
for a poster presentation. Poster proposals must be submitted as a
one-page (8.5 x 11 inch) document and must include:

    * An abstract of 50-75 words summarizing the submission

    * A description of the problem addressed and specific purposes of
the system, service, or project; or, in the case of original research,
an overview of the methodology, evaluation results, and conclusions

    * The names, academic degree(s), affiliations, and locations
(city, state, and country, if international) of all authors

Panels
Panel topics may be on a specific aspect of theory, application, or
experience pertaining to any aspect of biomedical or health
informatics, or may provide interdisciplinary viewpoints that cut
across traditional themes. Panels should be limited to four
participants and a moderator. Panel sessions will typically consist of
four 15 minute presentations, each followed by 5 minutes of questions,
with 10 minutes for closing discussion. An individual may be the
primary organizer of only one panel, and may not participate on more
than two panels total. Panel proposals must not exceed a maximum of
three (8.5 x 11 inch) pages and must include:


    * An abstract of 150-200 words, describing the panel, that will
serve as the basis for a description in the on-line and print programs

    * A general description of the panel and issue(s) that will be examined

    * A brief description of each panelists presentation

    * The names, academic degree(s), affiliations, and locations
(city, state, and country, if international) of the panel organizer
and all participants

    * A statement included at the conclusion of the proposal by the
panel organizer that all participants have agreed to take part on the panel


Summit
Co-sponsor

AMIA, 4915 St. Elmo Avenue, Suite 401, Bethesda, MD 20814, 
phone:301-657-1291, fax:301-657-1296, mail[]amia.org

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