Mar 08, 2017 07:33 AM EST By Emily Marks, UniversityHerald Reporter

Stanford will be collaborating with five University of California (UC) campuses for the BRAID health-research alliance. This group will focus on removing administrative barriers to sharing research resources, talent, productivity tools and bioinformatics expertise.

Leaders believe that overhead costs can decrease and health care projects can be done at a faster pace by allowing research teams to use specialized resources and experts across the institutions, Stanford Medicine's official website reported. As a result, this can benefit the people of California as well as the nation as a whole.

University of California launched the Biomedical Research Acceleration, Integration and Development (BRAID) program in 2010. It started with five UC campuses namely: Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco.

The program was able to develop several ways to streamline research processes, which includes the UC ReX Data Explorer. It is a secure, online system that allows cross-institution access to clinical data from millions of de-identified patient records.

Stanford is the newest member of the group. The university will continue UC BRAID's efforts to develop tools that can help researchers recruit study participants, improve relationships with health care industry partners as well as work on speedy regulatory approvals.

Mark Cullen, co-director of the Stanford Center for Clinical and Translational Research and Education (Spectrum) and director of the Stanford Center for Population Health Sciences, expressed his excitement over the program. He expects the alliance to produce more effective prevention programs and treatments for specific targets.

In the University of California's official website, the university revealed that the alliance will be working on preparing for the upcoming National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandate. The agency requires single human subjects protection review for federally funded multisite research.

The group expects the engagement of California's diverse population in recruiting study participants via traditional and emerging strategies. This is now possible through social media and online recruitment registries.

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