# Biomedical Data Commons Workbench (BDCW)

> **NIH NIH OT2** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO · 2024 · $298,514

## Abstract

The future of biomedicine will rely on the ability to integrate genotype and phenotype data contextually to
identify biomarkers, decipher mechanisms, reconstruct networks, and develop quantitative models by
biomedical and clinical researchers in a seamless manner. What would be extremely valuable is a webaccessible
one-stop shop providing these capabilities. Creating such seamless infrastructure is the
vision of our initiative. We propose the development of the Biomedical Data Commons Workbench
(BDCW), which will help overcome the fundamental barriers to biomedical data integration.
BDCW will address two fundamental barriers faced by biomedical researchers – the first deals with
the question, are there data available that can answer a biomedical question or questions (also
referred to from the research point of view as a Use Case) and second, how can such data be
integratively analyzed without having to go through the tedious process of either developing or
using a variety of tools (which in turn requires working knowledge of computational methods).
Several Common Fund data sources attempt to help the end-user vis-à-vis the data they provide, but not
the ability to seamlessly interoperate with another Common Fund data source. Even if one were to identify
the appropriate data sources to address a given research question, the challenge of integration of these
diverse data is non-trivial. Data integration refers to the task of combining information about the same
entities managed in different information systems to present a unified data view across different systems.
It also refers to integrative analyses of multiple types of data, including data collected at different biological
scales, to discover new knowledge as to how biological systems function (“mechanisms”).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11090253
- **Project number:** 3OT2OD030544-01S4
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
- **Principal Investigator:** Shankar Subramaniam
- **Activity code:** OT2 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $298,514
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-09-23 → 2026-09-22

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11090253

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11090253, Biomedical Data Commons Workbench (BDCW) (3OT2OD030544-01S4). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11090253. Licensed CC0.

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