During the 1990s, the need for informatics was forced on the NIH campus by the growing realization that the large datasets generated by genomics and neuroscience research could not be efficiently handled by the primate cortex. The Human Genome and the Human Brain projects were early converts, although their interest was relatively narrow and did not result in a significant increase for informatics in general. In 1999, the BISTI report, which predicted a central role for biomedical computing in almost all future biological research, had an explosive effect on NIH with the result that many of the Institutes have now allocated significant resources to informatics research and to informatics training in a broad variety of programs.

Biosketch
Dr. Milton Corn is Associate Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and Director of the Library's grant programs, a principal source of funding for medical informatics research and training in the U.S. He is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Medical School. He was trained in internal medicine at Harvard's Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, and in hematology at Johns Hopkins. Most of his academic career was spent at Georgetown University School of Medicine, where he held the appointment of Professor of Medicine. In 1984-85 he was Medical Director of Georgetown University Hospital, and subsequently served for four years as Dean of Georgetown's Medical School. He joined N.I.H. in 1990, and administers a broad spectrum of grant programs related to computers and telecommunications in biomedicine.