NIH, DoD to Develop Traumatic Brain Injury Database

The National Institutes of Health, in partnership with the Department of Defense, is building a central database focused on traumatic brain injuries (TBI) that officials say will aid in better prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

The Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) database, funded at $10 million over four years, is designed to accelerate comparative effectiveness research on brain injury treatment and diagnosis. It will serve as a central repository for new data, link to current databases and allow valid comparison of results across studies.

"There are many traumatic brain injury studies whose value to scientific research and clinical care could be greatly enhanced by transforming the data into a common, easily available format," said Walter Koroshetz, MD, deputy director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)...