Lack of well-phenotype samples remains a key bottleneck in biomedical research. The costs associated with collection often exceed those associated with any other step in the discovery process. The Crimson application addresses these issues by enabling high-throughput, cost-effective collection of samples for IRB-approved studies by (1) real-time query of discarded samples from Clinical Laboratories and (2) leveraging cohorts generated with i2b2's tools (Informatics for Integrating Biology to the Bedside). Crimson's use with i2b2 has significantly reduced costs associated with sample collection for investigators, often by 1-2 orders of magnitude, while also increasing the throughput of materials available to IRB-approved studies. We believe full integration of Crimson as an i2b2 cell will further promulgate these capabilities at both local and national levels. We propose to develop Crimson vocabularies to increase its interoperability within the i2b2 infrastructure, further design and develop means for distributed queries enabling high-throughput sample collection across institutions, and develop and test an economic model of Crimson's impact upon a research enterprise for studies using Crimson within i2b2 to enable high-throughput sample collection for large-scale research studies.
Acquisition of well-phenotyped samples remains the rate-limiting step in many areas of biomedical research. The Crimson application was developed to tap into discarded sample streams from Pathology Departments to both provide a cost-effective and high-throughput means to rapidly acquire samples for use in IRB-approved research. Though the application arose independently of i2b2 (Informatics for Integrating Biology to the Bedside), its use within i2b2 has realized the impact of high-throughput and cost effective sample collection on the progress of studies requiring tens of thousands of samples in genomic or other biomedical analyses. To date Crimson accepts i2b2 forwarded cohorts from the i2b2CRC to initiate sample collection. Given the synergies realized with this limited interaction, we hypothesize that closer integration of Crimson within the i2b2 framework will provide greater effectiveness of both applications in attaining goals of scalable infrastructure that can support the research enterprises across academic institutions.
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