Deconstructing the Translational Tower of Babel

A principal stumbling block in translation is the compartmentalized nature of data—from biomedical research, disease classifications, health records, clinical trials, and adverse event reports—across diseases and disciplines. For the last 24 months, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) has been funding a feasibility assessment phase of the Translator, focused on identifying data integration and inclusion barriers and exploring inferential or predictive models that would provide new insights into biology, health, and disease. At the end of the feasibility phase, the NCATS will assess whether the scientific, operational, and cultural experiments have been successful enough to warrant ramping up to build a fully functional Translator that finds and connects existing data, provides previously unknown insights into diseases and possible treatments, and is able to make inferences and predictions even when data are missing.