FASEB Comments on the NIH Data Initiative

By Bethany Drehman

On December 7, 2012, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) unveiled an implementation plan in response to its Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Data and Informatics Working Group Report. The plan is comprised of two initiatives: the Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) and Infrastructure Plus, which together were estimated to cost a combined $125 million per year for the next five to seven years; however, due to sequestration, this projection may be revised.

Infrastructure Plus is primarily an in-house program focused on intramural and administrative data handling and computing capabilities. BD2K, the larger component of the implementation plan, aims to transform the use of data - particularly "big data" - within the biomedical sciences and includes the following main components:

• Supporting database/resource creation, resource accessibility, and community-based development of data standards for each field of research

• Developing and distributing analytical software

• Increasing the number of computational biomedical
  trainees and improving qualitative and computational training among all NIH supported trainees and researchers

• Establishing centers of excellence for biomedical big data, with the majority being investigator-initiated centers

 In fiscal year 2013, BD2K activities will primarily focus on accessing needs and current data practices to inform activities in future years. As a part of this plan, NIH released a request for information (RFI) in February to obtain insight from the biomedical research community about qualitative training needs and provide background for developing a workshop on the topic.

The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) provided comments to the ACD Working Group on the implementation plan in March of this year. In its response, FASEB thanked NIH for addressing this critical and rapidly expanding field, and listed the following points that might limit the value of this initiative if not addressed:

• Reiterated the need for NIH leadership to facilitate data sharing through informed consent practices and intellectual property law
• Emphasized the value of funding mid-level information technology that is available and easily assessable to other federally funded investigators regardless of the funding agency
• Recommended that relevant education and training be developed by the scientific community and that NIH avoid instituting a prescriptive approach to qualitative training
• Expressed concern regarding the historical efficacy of the National Centers for Biomedical Computing
• Expressed concern of how the initiative would be funded in this current fiscal climate

FASEB also provided comments previously to the ACD working group during the development of the Data and Informatics report in 2012. In collaboration with FASEB constituent societies, FASEB will continue to monitor and develop policy recommendations for "Big Data," data sharing, and computation bioscience issues.