NCI is partnering on an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) initiative to accelerate health research efforts by building the ARPA-H Biomedical Data Fabric (BDF) Toolbox. This toolbox is a collection of software tools to thread together research data from labs and centers across the country and across scientific disciplines (the “data fabric") to enable researchers to glean insights from a vast pool of information and use and reuse data in new ways. These early efforts with NCI serve as a starting point for other health conditions. Read the full press release.

Spawned from a need to leverage revolutionary and innovative technical solutions to help the cancer community gain better access to data, this ARPA-H BDF Toolbox will contain different types of tools that can tackle access and usability challenges with research data.

NCI and its Frederick National Lab for Cancer Research (FNLCR) are soliciting proposals for this integrated ARPA-H BDF Toolbox capability for cancer. Those with cancer research data expertise and an interest in developing an integrated capability (in partnership with FNLCR) should apply by November 28, 2023.

This work aligns and underscores the aims of the Cancer Moonshot^SM, which serves as a catalyst for creating solutions to reduce cancer incidence and death. Dr. Erika Kim, NCI program lead on this ARPA-H BDF project, shares, "With a successful effort, we should be able to connect lots of data across different domains using new data integration tools. This integration will create knowledge bases to maximize use of health research data, not just cancer. Twenty years down the road, with the click of a mouse, we will be able to track a comprehensive patient history. Successfully treating patients for the future will require knowing what has happened to the patient in the long term, and that knowledge is in the data.”