Identifying challenges and opportunities in clinical research informatics: analysis of a facilitated discussion at the 2006 AMIA Annual Symposium.

Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) is a rapidly developing sub-domain of Biomedical Informatics that has seen considerable growth in recent years. While there are numerous activities and initiatives ongoing in this domain, systematic consideration and analysis of the challenges and opportunities that exist in this area are lacking. To begin to address this gap in knowledge and inform next steps in advancing this developing domain, we conducted a facilitated discussion among a diverse group of interested participants attending a meeting of the Clinical Research Informatics Working Group at the AMIA 2006 annual symposium. Findings from our analysis of these data are presented here and indicate a broad array of challenges and opportunities facing this developing area. These findings add new information to the limited literature regarding CRI and should provide direction for those working to set the CRI research and development agenda.