Biomedical informatics research network: building a national collaboratory to hasten the derivation of new understanding and treatment of disease.

Through support from the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Research Resources, the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) is pioneering the use of advanced cyberinfrastructure for medical research. By synchronizing developments in advanced wide area networking, distributed computing, distributed database federation, and other emerging capabilities of e-science, the BIRN has created a collaborative environment that is paving the way for biomedical research and clinical information management. The BIRN Coordinating Center (BIRN-CC) is orchestrating the development and deployment of key infrastructure components for immediate and long-range support of biomedical and clinical research being pursued by domain scientists in three neuroimaging test beds.