The NCI-supported caBIG program is facing a major expansion of its mission and of the community of stakeholders that it must engage. The success of the program to date has been widely recognized by numerous thought leaders, technology innovators, and program managers in the fields of biomedical computing and health information technology. These leaders have been influenced by both the technological sophistication and the open community processes of the caBIG program, and are seeking to adapt caBIG to meet the much broader agenda of health care information management, sharing, and integration across institutions, communities of practice, and patients.
As a means towards engaging this larger community and contributing to the creation of solutions for its needs, the BIG Health Consortium was formed, a non-governmental organization that is affiliated with caBIG, but which has a complementary agenda that is focused on enabling the integration of research, care delivery, and patient-driven decision making in practical ways. As a consequence, the institutional stakeholders associated with BIG Health Consortium extend well beyond the cancer centers, universities, and cooperative groups that make up the core NCI-funded constituencies that have participated in caBIG since its original incarnation. The extended community thus goes beyond what is considered caBIG-proper today, and includes groups that are not yet connected to caGrid.
