INBIOMEDvision Activities > Think Tanks
Think Tanks
Community Building Activities: Think-Tank sessions
INBIOMEDvision organized three main Think Tank sessions, seeking the involvement of participants from different communities. The purpose of these sessions was to focus in detail on the state of Biomedical Informatics and to identify opportunities for future collaborative work.
The Think Tanks were composed of invited individuals, considered to be leaders in their field, from a wide range of relevant academic disciplines, clinical practice and industry, linked with Biomedical Informatics.
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Think Tanks Brochure |
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 Strategic Report on Genotype-Phenotype Resources in the European Union.
This white paper was prepared to assess the opportunities and obstacles that confront us as Europe plans to make full use of the integration of genome-based data resources with resources detailing disease-based and other human phenotypes. It represents the outcome of five hours of intensive discussions and a consensus among 17 invited experts who participated in a Think Tank convened in Brussels, Belgium on 5 October 2011. The report addresses prospects for the development and application of genotype-phenotype resources and considered these to be very promising. Establishing clear relationships (correlations) between increasing amounts of genotypic information |
| available from clinical studies (e.g. as provided by genome wide association studies (GWAS)), and similarly of phenotype information at the population level, is still largely impossible today. Also, assuming that the genotype controls the phenotype in all cases is unlikely to be correct. Indeed there are rather general grounds for thinking that, making any trivial correlations will always be fraught with difficulty. This could also assist in “stratification” – instead of rejecting so many drugs, it could be that several existing ones will work well for sets of patients on genetic grounds. (Add comments) | |
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Strategic Report for Translational Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in the European Union.
This white paper was prepared in order to assess the opportunities and obstacles that confront us as Europe explores the translational role of bioinformatics and systems biology in drug discovery and clinical medicine. The report represents the outcome of 2.5 hours of intensive discussions and a consensus among 23 invited world-leading experts who participated in a Think Tank convened in Barcelona, Spain, on 17 October 2011. We see potential in sub-cellular (or molecular) systems biology approaches to biomedicine, as compared to conventional methods of drug design. Despite these |
| approaches being at an infant state, and a vast amount of research remains to be done, they may be able to assist in more personalised approaches to drug treatment, for example in the use of multi-target therapy for finding genotype association to risk of disease and drug response. For translational systems biology to make a major impact, the whole system of data access (including access to medical records) needs to be transformed into one based on more openness and sharing of information between hospitals, academia and industry. Various societal structures currently impede this development. Regulatory and funding agencies must be involved to overcome these obstacles. (Add comments) | |
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Strategic Report on the Re-use of Clinical Information for Research in the European Union.
This report has been prepared in order to contribute to the current debates on the opportunities and obstacles that Europe faces to facilitate the re-use of clinical data in biomedical research. It represents the outcome of five hours of intensive discussions within a Think Tank convened at UCL on 24 June 2011 under the auspices of the INBIOMEDvision Project Consortium. (Add comments) |
