Sage Bionetworks

Research Communities and Challenges: Sage Bionetworks conducts research independently as well as with collaborators worldwide across a variety of disease areas. We work to redefine how complex biological data is gathered, shared and used through open systems, incentives, and norms. Our work includes the building of platforms and services and undertaking research developing predictors relating to health. Research: As biological research has become more data intensive, the breadth of data and expertise required to address research problems has expanded. It requires the integrated efforts of a distributed set of researchers (such as bench/data scientists, data engineers, project managers, administrators, governance experts, and clinical researchers) with shared interests and complementary resources. Effective collaboration depends on a collective ability to work together in trusted ways that lead to translatable biomedical insights. We call this scientific coordination. Sage's scientific coordination stack includes: 1) hypothesis and data generation, 2) data curation, 3) analysis, 4) interpretation, and 5) dissemination. We focus on building a federated network of individuals who bring diverse expertise and approaches to develop robust solutions. Research projects include AMP AD and supplements for Ingestion, Longevity, Multi Scale, Diversity Cohorts May, TREAT AD, Model AD, M2OVE Consortium, RISK Variants, Depression Emory, BUADC, Helmsley VEIOBD, Boston Children's Hospital VEIOBD, MC2, CHOP INCLUDE, RECOVER, imCore, CTF Synodos, JHU NTAP, GFF NF, Gray Foundation, Gates COVID Cohort, HTAN, HTAN Supplement, iAtlas 3 & 4, AACR Genie, CD2H, CD2H COVID Supplement, Rochester Udall, Mayo Subtyping, RWJF Pioneering Ideas, FHCRC Accelerator in addition to other projects. Challenges: With algorithms playing an increasing role in biomedical analysis and patient care, there's a need for a more rigorous framework for evaluating and improving the capabilities of these algorithms. Sage Bionetworks has pioneered the development of concepts and infrastructure to objectively evaluate algorithms across a broad spectrum of biomedical domains, including bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and clinical trials. As a trusted partner in hosting challenges and benchmarking initiatives, Sage serves as a broker between data generators and data modelers. We combine technology with biomedical and data science expertise to facilitate the objective assessment of algorithms on critical data sets, including proprietary data and algorithms that cannot be broadly shared. Sage works with the DREAM community to host open challenges. DREAM is recognized as a leader in biomedical competitions, successfully motivating research teams to address fundamental questions about systems biology and translational medicine and to advance computational methods. DREAM challenges invite participants to propose solutions - fostering collaboration and building communities in the process. Sage Bionetworks provides institutional support, along with the infrastructure to host challenges via our Synapse platform. Active Challenges hosted on the Synapse platform in 2022 included: RADx Long Covid, RARE-X, MOD, Bridge 2AI, BARDA, ITCR NIH, Anit-PDI Response Prediction DREAM, and Electronic Medical Record NLP DREAM.

Digital Health: Smartphones and other wearable sensors have put touchscreens and high-fidelity sensors into the pockets of billions of people. These technologies provide an opportunity to paint a rich understanding of health and disease in the everyday world outside of the clinic. They also provide communication tools that allow participants a more active voice in research programs. With our Digital Health program, we work to advance health research through practices that support the design, development and implementation of studies that use technology to monitor health outside of the clinical setting, and the analysis and sharing of the resulting study data. We help to derive and test digital biomarkers. We evaluate analytical methodologies to benchmark best practices in study design and data analysis. Sage's Digital Health program is built around Bridge, a technology platform for conducting biomedical research studies primarily using the ResearchKit (iOS) and ResearchStack (Android) frameworks. Bridge is composed of HIPAA-compliant web services and multi-language SDKs that facilitate: registration and informed consent to participate in research; web-based tools to design and schedule study surveys and sensor-based tasks; acquisition and secure transfer of multiple data types (surveys, sensors, audio, video, or custom data types); a study management portal with daily dashboard updates; and de-identification and storage of study data in our collaborative data science environment, Synapse. Digital Health studies active in 2022 included: Scripps AoU, NWU Toolbox, Biomarin PKU, DIAN, Pscorcast, MGH At Home, Columbia CZI COVID Registry, Wellcome Trust Databank, ADDF Digital Accelerators, M2C2, Cleveland Clinic Informed Consent, RECOVER Mobile Health Platform/Movile Health Repositories Working Group, 1KD Program funded by Wellcome LEAP Inc, and VA Merit.