tranSMART: An Open Source and Community-Driven Informatics and Data Sharing Platform for Clinical and Translational Research

tranSMART is an emerging global open source public private partnership community developing a comprehensive informatics-based analysis and data-sharing cloud platform for clinical and translational research. The tranSMART consortium includes pharmaceutical and other companies, not-for-profits, academic entities, patient advocacy groups, and government stakeholders. The tranSMART value proposition relies on the concept that the global community of users, developers, and stakeholders are the best source of innovation for applications and for useful data. Continued development and use of the tranSMART platform will create a means to enable “pre-competitive” data sharing broadly, saving money and, potentially accelerating research translation to cures. Significant transformative effects of tranSMART includes 1) allowing for all its user community to benefit from experts globally, 2) capturing the best of innovation in analytic tools, 3) a growing ‘big data’ resource, 4) convergent standards, and 5) new informatics-enabled translational science in the pharma, academic, and not-for-profit sectors.