Grid 101: An Introduction to Grid / Distributed Computing

The scope of emerging distributed computing research within public health, and specifically within NCPHI at CDC, is to translate research knowledge to enable better health outcomes within communities and to develop information that "health decision makers" (i.e., individuals, epidemiologists, medical practitioners, payers and administrators) can use.   The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has launched the Cancer Bioinformatics Grid (caBIG) by utilizing distributed computing architectures and methodologies as well as open source tooling and software to accelerate cancer research and practice. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has adopted distributed computing concepts such as Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to provide a secure, nationwide, interoperable health information infrastructure that will connect providers, consumers, and others involved in supporting health and healthcare. The widespread use of distributed computing technologies appears to be the next logical step on the horizon for national health systems development and interoperability.  NCPHI has teamed with public health practitioners, universities (nationally and internationally), advanced public health practice centers, centers of excellence, hospitals, clinics, other CDC centers, NCI, NHIN and many more organizations to solve public health problems with distributed computing solutions.