A translational engine at the national scale: informatics for integrating biology and the bedside.

Informatics for integrating biology and the bedside (i2b2) seeks to provide the instrumentation for using the informational by-products of health care and the biological materials accumulated through the delivery of health care to conduct discovery research and to study the healthcare system in vivo. This complements existing efforts such as prospective cohort studies or trials outside the delivery of routine health care. i2b2 has been used to generate genome-wide studies at less than one tenth the cost and one tenth the time of conventionally performed studies as well as to identify important risk from commonly used medications. i2b2 has been adopted by over 60 academic health centers internationally.