Database will speed research toward better prevention, diagnosis and treatment

The National Institutes of Health, in partnership with the Department of Defense, is building a central database on traumatic brain injuries. 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, M.D., deputy director of NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS).

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Computerized tomography scans of six individuals with different types of traumatic brain injury. EDH = epidural hematoma, DAI = diffuse axonal injury, SDH= subdural hematoma, SAH/IVH = subarachnoid hemorrhage and intraventricular hemorrhage. From Saatman et al., J Neurotrauma, July 2008, 25(7): 719-738. Reprinted with permission from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, www.liebertpub.com/neu.