The i2b2 tranSMART Foundation announces COVID AUTHORS and COVID DATATHON

Foundation advances two initiatives in support of COVID-19 research

Wakefield, MA, Nov 13, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Wakefield, Massachusetts – November 6, 2020 – The i2b2 tranSMART Foundation, a global non-profit open-source foundation advancing the development of clinical and translational research through effective collaboration, has been awarded a grant to support the initial deployment of three key initiatives to advance COVID-19 research.

COVIDAuthors.org is a new website containing searchable online profiles of more than 200,000 researchers who have written scientific articles related to COVID-19. It shows which authors have written articles together and illustrates how scientists from many different disciplines have come together to study this worldwide pandemic. Policy makers can use the website to find experts around the world by research topic or geographic region. Funding agencies can track the impact of their investments into COVID-19 research. Investigators can search for collaborators for new COVID-19 research studies. COVIDAuthors.org is powered by Profiles Research Network Software, which was developed by Harvard Catalyst, Harvard’s Clinical and Translational Science Center (Funded by the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through its Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program, grant number UL1TR002541).

The Foundation, in cooperation with the Axiomedix and the Open Source Pharma Foundation, is holding a Datathon on November 18-20, 2020.  This Datathon will focus on collaborative data science to better understand the coronavirus and related SARS and MERS viruses, potentially leading to new scientific knowledge and ultimately improvement in patient

care. Publicly available datasets relating to the viruses are available in the tranSMART v19 platform on the Foundation Library server to facilitate collaboration. A suite of data exploration and analysis tools will also be available. Participating data scientists will collaborate to identify potential cross-disease biomarkers to advance our understanding of disease pathophysiology and to inform new therapeutic approaches. Leading scientific software vendors and developers will be available to assist throughout the Datathon. The Datathon will be held virtually using the Zoom conferencing system.  See https://i2b2transmart.org/virtual-datathon-2020.

For more information about these projects and their availability, please see the i2b2 tranSMART website at www.i2b2transmart.org. The  projects received support from a grant from Dell Technologies.

About The i2b2 tranSMART Foundation – The i2b2 tranSMART Foundation is a global non-profit open-source organization focused on realizing the promise of precision medicine.  It provides open-source software and databases representing more than 250 million patient lives to thousands of physicians and scientists worldwide.  Its data and analytics platforms help academic, non-profit, healthcare, government and commercial research communities effectively conduct collaborative research.  The Foundation is headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts.  The i2b2 tranSMART Foundation can also be found on the web at www.i2b2tranSMART.org.

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Contact:

Rudy Potenzone Ph D
i2b2 tranSMART Foundation
Rudy.potenzone@i2b2transmart.org
425-802-6952