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This is the home page of Integrative Informatics (I2) hands-on initiatives at Stony Brook University. Ultimately, the opportunity, and the need, for these initiatives derives from 1) the emergence of third generation Web technologies and 2) data driven Cloud architectures that enables consumer-facing applications. The wide adoption of mobile computing in particular has fundamentally reset the requirements for truly cross-platform solutions in a very specific way. The definition of interoperable architectures as "decoupling the data layer from the presentation layer" is now at everybody's fingertips: respectively, as Cloud services and as Web Apps.
The effects of these transformations have a very wide range of applications in the Life Sciences in general, and in the Biomedical domain in particular. They range from the increasing reliance on cloud services for computational genomics to the critical reference role that Big OpenData is set to play in improving health care outcomes. This specifically includes programatic interoperability with research Big Data such as The Cancer Genome Atlas, ICGC, and many others. As illustrated by the SMART platforms initiative, and by the adoption of HL7 FHIR as per ONC recommendation, even clinical systems, the walled garden of legacy technologies, are now within reach of the new integrative frameworks. And they may as well, since wearable sensors and mobile computing are shaping what the Internet of Things (IoT) is about in Health Care.
In contrast to the wide range of applications, the technology innovations supporting the new data driven, consumer-facing, computational ecosystem, are narrow and elegant. They greatly simplify the software development stack, and dramatically remove barriers to development. This shared Web + Cloud toolbox is the focus of I2. There are presently two types of initiatives planned - a) Weekly hands-on workshop/hackathon, and a b) Immersive Summer School configured as a hands-on data storm. The common features of these two events are their hands-on nature (this is about programming - there is no escaping it!); willingness to approach multiple data sources*; and narrow focus on interoperability** by exploring user/domain-facing architectures and Web technologies ***.
* First show me the data!
** This is either about using or creating REST HTTP APIs.
*** Web Platform - yes, you'll be writing a lot of JavaScript, the assembler language of the Web.