The Biomedical Informatics Core was established in 1998 to meet the information management needs of Cancer Center investigators. The Core provides a broad range of hardware, software and personnel resources that serve many investigators and several other shared resource facilities. The Core also works in collaboration with City of Hope and Cancer Center governance committees to promulgate standards, optimize systems and minimize redundancy through continued integration of data, databases, applications and processes. Over the last five years, BIC has become the most widely used Cancer Center shared resource, and Core usage continues to increase each year. A new subscription-based chargeback policy was implemented in October 2003, and chargeback revenue has increased from $7,250 in 2003 to $66,700 in 2006. Since the last competitive renewal, over 1/4 (276/1001) of all Cancer Center peer-reviewed publications involved the use of informatics shared resources. Throughout this evaluation period, the Core has significantly expanded the depth, breadth and cost-effectiveness of support for Center research. Examples include (1) new Citrix-based software deployment technologies that replace hundreds of software installations on individual workstations and provide secure, platform-independent, remote access to Core resourcess via the Internet and City of Hope intranet;(2) a new research and technology collaboration with the San Diego Supercomputing Center to pursue joint funding opportunities and host the Core's most computationally-intensive bioinformatics applications on the TeraGrid national supercomputing network;(3) development and delivery of more than 20 end-user training programs in collaboration with commercial software vendors and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI);and (4) funded participation in the caBIG Clinical Trials Management Systems (CTMS) workspace to develop workflows, information models and open-source software applications to facilitate Adverse Event (AE) reporting on a national scale. During FY 2006, the Core provided informatics support for 135 Cancer Center members;76% of the users supported by biomedical informatics had peer-reviewed funding. Annual budget for the core is $2,065,231 (44% institutional, 3% user fees, 45% other), with 7% ($151,000) requested from the CCSG.
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