SCIENTIFIC NETWORKING AND COLLABORATIONS - Collaborative Computational Technologies for Biomedical Research - page 156

Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC, http://www.insdc.org/). This is
comprised of data repositories from Europe (EMBL-Bank), Japan (DDBJ),
and the United States (GenBank) that exchange sequence data on a daily
basis. There are of course many different areas of biology that have (and are)
benefi ting from access to these publically available data sets. A good example
of this is provided by Southan and Cameron from the European Bioinformatics
Institute. They note that the nucleotide sequence of the 2009 H1N1 infl uenza
virus was produced within days of detection in patients and the information
was rapidly disseminated to those who could make use of it [18].

10.4.2 Biomedical Images

Images are central to biomedical sciences ranging in scale from scans of whole
organisms down to images at the scale of single molecules. Now that most
images are in digital form, they can be readily shared across the Internet. The
potential of image sharing for improving medical diagnosis has been recog-
nized in the form of networked resources. Examples include the Spine
Pathology & Image Retrieval System (SPIRS) [19] and the National Cancer
Institute (NCI)-sponsored cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG)
program [20] (see also Chapter 17). Digital pathology is beginning to have an
impact upon the operations of histopathology laboratories. Companies such
as Aperio Technologies (http://www.aperio.com) produce the hardware to
digitize slides so that electronic images can be distributed to pathologists in
many different sites (e.g., see [21]). A whole range of desktop communication
tools (e.g., WebEx, www.webex.com) are now commercially available that
provide sophisticated videoconferencing systems to allow display of images
and other data as well as discussion in real time. The above considerations
apply to video images, although the bandwidth required may be considerably
higher than with static images. Video is commonplace in the form of embedded
clips in websites for journals, news, and entertainment and it serves a useful
function in training, for example, in laboratory procedures. Videos available
on YouTube are providing an unlikely source of medical information to
researchers interested in how patients view their disease and what sources of
information they see as being useful. A number of examples are available in
the recent literature [e.g., 22].

10.4.3 New Publication Models

Van de Sompel et al. recently stated, “The current scholarly communication
system is nothing but a scanned copy of the paper-based system” [23]. Despite
the extensive use of online publication for scientifi c communication, most
electronic papers are still copies of a printed manuscript, albeit with online
supplementary methods and hyperlinked references. It is now impossible for
the average scientist to digest all the information about their fi eld that is being
published at an ever-increasing rate and which shows no sign of slowing down.
This is why the concept of the Semantic Web is so important for the creative