The National Science Foundation (NSF) yesterday released a report on its support for cloud computing, describing the outcomes of “investments in cloud computing research, recommendations for research focus and program improvements, and other related recommendations.” Emphasizing the role of cloud computing — “a vital area of national importance that requires further research and development” — the report highlights some of the 125 cloud computing research awards issued by NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate between 2009 and 2011, spanning areas of architecture, algorithms, big data, security and privacy, green computing, and so on. Among these are the set of awards enabled by a partnership between NSF and Microsoft over […]

The Bipartisan Policy Center released a report last Friday — Transforming Health Care: The Role of Health IT — emphasizing the critically important role that health information technology plays “in supporting new models of care and payment designed to achieve health care’s triple aim” of improving health, improving the experience of care for patients and families, and reducing the cost of care. In the report — whose contributors include leading health care experts from around the country — the Bipartisan Policy Center concludes, “despite the introduction of IT to nearly every other aspect of modern life, the U.S. health care system remains largely paper-based.” The report identifies six common attributes regarding health […]

USA TODAY is out this week with an interesting article featuring the work of MacArthur Foundation Fellow Constance Steinkuehler, an Assistant Professor in the Educational Communications & Technology program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — who’s on assignment for 18 months as a Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to study video games that improve health, education, civic engagement and the environment, among other areas. According to the USA TODAY piece: If you’re training for a new job someday soon with a video game controller in your hands, thank Constance Steinkuehler.   This summer, when your kids’ favorite science museum boasts a new augmented-reality […]

Back in November, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting broad public input about “the long-term preservation of, and public access to, the results of Federally-funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications.” Now this week, OSTP has posted the comments that it received — from scientists, citizens, publishers, scientific societies, libraries, and others. According to the OSTP Blog (follow the link):

The National Institute of General Medicine Sciences (NIGMS), an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supporting basic research and research training, announced earlier this month that it would establish two new divisions — including one focused on biomedical technology, bioinformatics, and computational biology — as part of a reorganization that includes the dissolution of the NIH National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) which has had a history of supporting scientific computing. According to the announcement: The new Division of Biomedical Technology, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology administers research and research training in areas that join biology with the computer sciences, engineering, mathematics and physics. It includes programs of the former […]

The National Institutes’ of Health (NIH) Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) has issued a Request for Information (RFI) soliciting input into the deliberations of its newly established Working Group on Data and Informatics, which is seeking to investigate the management, integration, and analysis of large biomedical datasets. According to the announcement: The group will gather information from various sources, including internal and external data and informatics experts, and develop recommendations to present to the ACD and the NIH Director on policies regarding the management, integration, and analysis of research data and administrative data.   In its initial deliberations, the working group identified the following issues as important to consider when developing […]