Establishing an NIH-wide Geospatial Infrastructure for Medical Research: Opportunities, Challenges, and Next Steps

Abstract

Such challenges are common across the diverse Institutes and Centers of NIH, cutting across the social and biomedical sciences.However, NIH-funded research incorporating geographic approaches has thus far been carried out primarily on a project-by-project basis, mitigating the potential advancement of geographic data, methods, and theories across NIH divisions.Very substantial scale economies, not to mention opportunities for innovative and collaborative research discoveries, can be achieved by addressing them collectively.While many institutes have made substantial investments in spatial data and tools, a collective approach through a common infrastructure would offer significant advantages.To evaluate the potential development of an NIH-wide geography and geographic information infrastructure ("geospatial infrastructure") to support basic biomedical research and public health applications, the Association of American Geographers (AAG), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) recently co-sponsored a highly-successful workshop.Participants included senior scientists from across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), leading researchers in GIScience, NIH-funded researchers who use geographic theory and methods in their research, and industry experts on geographic technologies.The workshop was held on February 22-23, 2011 at NIH facilities in Rockville, Maryland.This report presents the key ideas along with a series of proposed next steps that emerged from workshop presentations and discussions.In addition, Appendix A includes a summary of the workshop, Appendix B lists workshop participants, and Appendix C details the workshop agenda. KEY IDEASAn NIH-wide geospatial infrastructure should be broadly conceived to encompass technology, architecture, integrated and interoperable spatiotemporal databases, metadata and standards, analytical methods and tools, visualization, data access and privacy protocols, and training and capacity building in geographic theory and analysis.The following key ideas synthesize the comments and suggestions shared by workshop participants, and provide a broad framework in support of an NIH-wide geospatial infrastructure.

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