Facilitating collaborative biomedical research

A thorough study of biomedical research collaboration is necessary to systematically identify the social and technical infrastructure needed to support and improve the development of informatics tools to facilitate biomedical collaboration. This research attempts to do so through an in-depth qualitative study of collaborative biomedical research settings. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews, observations, and artifact examination. Four broad categories related to collaboration emerged from the preliminary analysis: a) factors contributing to the initiation of collaborative research efforts, b) factors contributing to the sustaining collaboration, c) factors facilitating collaboration, and d) barriers to collaboration.