Clinical and translational science informatics:translating information to transform health care

Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) is a new and emerging academic discipline which seeks to reduce(a) the time-to-application of research to, and (b) the time-to-research of, health care problems. Translating information within and between the research and practice silos is central to CTS. The role of CTS Informatics (CTSI) can be stated as'translating information to transform health care'. We present an ontological analysis of the transformation of health care by CTSI. The five dimensions of the ontology are derived by parsing the above definition of CTSI. They are: (a) information, (b) semiotic translation, (c) spatial translation, (d) temporal translation, and (e) health care. Each dimension is defined by a taxonomy. Each sentence, formed by concatenating categories across the five dimensions using appropriate prefixes and conjunctive words and phrases, is a natural language descriptor of CTSI. The set of all such sentences is a closed description of CTSI.