Cyberinfrastructure for Biology
The NCRI Informatics Initiative

The UK National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Informatics Initiative was established in 2003 by a partnership of the major UK cancer research funders to maximise the use of the data generated through research. The Initiative is working on deploying a framework - the Informatics Platform - of data standards, collaboration policies, technical infrastructure and community support to allow access to an integrated collection of data sources, tools and services through a common user interface. This requires both cultural change and development of technical solutions, which are coordinated through the Initiative’s Community Alliances and Platform Development teams respectively. The Community Alliances team is working on communication activities; raising awareness of data sharing policies and best practices; promoting the use of already established data standards and supporting development of new ones. The Platform Development team is working on the technical implementation of the Informatics Platform. Similar to caBIG® and BIRN teams, they have chosen the Globus Toolkit as the underlying grid technology for their ONcology Information eXchange (ONIX) grid middleware component. The first production release of ONIX is scheduled for the end of January 2009 and sees the establishment of a core functionality, initially consisting of a portal, user interface and a catalogue of sources and services (the Resource Catalogue), coupled to a framework of standards and tools for community use. An Adapter Toolkit will also be available to facilitate the linking resources into the ONIX grid.
The NCRI Informatics Initiative recognises the importance of developing a collaborative approach to informatics at both national and international levels to address the global challenge of making the different systems interoperable by establishing strategic partnerships with the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and the US National Cancer Institute’s caBIG® initiative.

More specifically, NCRI Informatics Initiative works closely with caBIG® to address interoperability issues and facilitate a stepwise approach between the two systems that aims at cross certification at the top level, following caBIG® processes and definitions at that level and reuse of caBIG® components where appropriate. Although the two programmes share similar goals, there are also variances in their detailed approaches due to differences in funding, governance models, existing resources (such as the UK National Health Service) and in national infrastructures. In this way, these two programmes are setting a paradigm of international collaboration that is working to implement a truly global biomedical cyberinfrastructure and work together to assist in the prevention and treatment of cancer by coordinating resources.