Solutions for enabling collaboration continue to be a challenge for biomedical informatics service providers. With the recent rise of so-called Science 2.0 web based tools, many solutions have been proposed using Internet technology including wiki's, document management systems, and custom websites. Here we propose utilizing an open platform, Google's OpenSocial platform, to exchange biomedical informatics applications and enable collaboration. The platform is extendable to other scientific disciplines. To this end we have developed the Laboratree research management system (http://laboratree.org) to enable collaborative document and data management creation, group and project messaging, centralized authentication using OpenID and application exchange using OpenSocial. While there are many other social networking tools available, they are largely reproducing Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn. By focusing less on social networking and adding features that enable secure project management and supporting open source and open standards, we believe our approach has a promising future for distributed development. In this SBIR Phase I proposal, we will show feasibility for the commercial version of Laboratree. First, we will develop a stand-alone distributeable Laboratree based on a federated user model with a single login. Second, we will add new features to Laboratree making it a comprehensive web-based scientific collaboration tool. Finally, we will begin to develop a user community of developers and collaborators. In Phase II, we will build an enterprise ready, commercially licensable web- based solution with an active community of users and testing sites. In Phase III, we will begin commercialization by licensing and supporting the most useful collaboration platform available.
Managing biomedical informatics data and collaborative relationships remains a challenging obstacle for NIH funded investigators. In this proposal, we propose to use an open platform in an innovative way to enable biomedical research activities electronically. Making the research process more efficient will have a tremendous impact on human health because it will make research focus more on the research and less on the overhead.
