RESEARCH INFORMATICS SHARED RESOURCE ABSTRACT The Research Informatics (RI) Shared Resource, established in 1995, provides Cancer Center members state- of-the-art software engineering, database design, and application and web development, as well as cutting- edge expertise in natural language processing, system design, data mining, and electronic data capture systems. Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) covers a majority of the costs of this stable, integrated team of computer professionals, enabling their allocation to the ongoing and new initiatives of highest importance to the cancer mission; priorities are determined by the HCI Director's Cabinet. Samir Courdy, BS, MBA, an accomplished computer scientist with expertise in software engineering and development of large-scale software systems, has directed the RI Shared Resource since 2006 and has managed all software development since 2000. Ms. Cindy Spigle, associate director of the RI Resource since 2011, is responsible for daily operations and assists Mr. Courdy in management. To achieve its goals, the RI Shared Resource provides computing infrastructure, hardware equipment, and services, including the latest advances in front-end graphical user interface (GUI) technologies and secure backend database engines and persistence layers. The RI Shared Resource has developed applications and databases for several other HCI-managed Shared Resources, including High-Throughput Genomics and Bioinformatic Analysis, Genetic Counseling, Biorepository and Molecular Pathology, and the Utah Population Database. The RI Shared Resource supports all four of the Cancer Center's Research Programs with the many software suites the team designs, builds, and supports. These include comprehensive suites of software applications for Cancer Clinical Research (CCR); Biospecimen Management and Annotation (itBioPath); a microarray and next-generation sequencing Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and experiment analysis and annotation suite (GNomEx); and a drug/chemical screening annotation and management suite (CSAM). CCR, itBioPath, and GNomEx are integrated systems providing genotype and phenotype associations for research. As software development is beyond the budget of most individual researchers, the RI Shared Resource adds important value to the Cancer Center by enabling a wide variety of researchers to utilize customized software tools without substantial financial investments. The Resource also provides cost savings to researchers by obtaining grant and institutional support to help offset software development costs. In 2013, use of the RI Shared Resource by Cancer Center members with peer-reviewed funding exceeded 57%, while the CCSG budget request is only 6% ($123,370) of the total proposed budget.
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