The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which funds UCSF’s CTSI and the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, has released its first Annual Report for 2012-2013.
The mission of NCATS is to “catalyze the generation of innovative methods and technologies that will enhance the development, testing and implementation of diagnostics and therapeutics across a wide range of human diseases and conditions.”
The report includes comments from Christopher P. Austin, MD, director of NCATS, along with an overview of progress and impact in the areas of pre-clinical research; clinical research, including the CTSAs; rare diseases; special initiatives; and strategic alliances and partnerships.
In its overview of the CTSA Consortium, the report highlights UC ReX, the University of California Research Exchange, which is “a secure, online system that enables cross-institution queries of clinical aggregate data from 12 million de-identified patient records derived from patient care activities at the five University of California medical campuses: Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.” UC ReX is a project of the UC BRAID, the UC Biomedical Research Accelerating, Integration and Development program, which is a model regional collaboration within the 62-institution consortium.
View the full NCATS Annual Report here.