Genomic platforms and clinical research

Scientists and clinicians increasingly use the term ‘platform’ to describe various facets of their work. Found on average in 23 titles/year of PubMed-indexed articles during the 1990s, this number rose to 248 during the first decade of the new century, and to 1,066 in the subsequent six years. A textual analysis of post-2000 titles shows that the term most frequently co-occurs with terms related to advanced, high-throughput (‘omics’) or biomedical imaging technologies. In this sense, platforms refer to technologies dependent upon sophisticated instruments, including computer equipment, bioinformatics tools, and biological reagents. The term is also used as a synonym for ‘core facilities’ – collections of equipment shared by researchers from one or more institutions.