The data management approach of the CCNMD is a two tiered plan. Tier one, involves the implementation and maintenance of a data warehouse system that has recently been developed within the Department of Psychiatry center-wide. This system provides access to the contributing projects and cores within the CCNMD system integrated data storage and data query capacity through a secure web-based portal. A 3 server computer cluster and a 2 terabyte mass storage system positioned behind the Mount Sinai fire-wall and further protected by 128 bit encryption constitutes the physical structure for data management. All of the data tables generated by the Brian Bank Core and the Clinical Core during the past 22 years have been integrated into this browser based data warehouse which now contains over 3100 variables and more than 2 million data points. These data sets are available for interrogation and mining to all CCNMD participants through a secure intranet. Also included as part of the electronically available data sets are macro and microscopic images of Brain Bank tissues and PDF files of source documents on which the research data are based. Tier two, involves statistical support for all CCNMD projects and cores. All of the CCNMD projects require considerable statistical data analysis, and because of the complexity of some of the hypotheses addressed a high level of statistical analytic sophistication. While all of the CCNMD investigators are well versed in the statistical approaches that are applicable to their specific hypotheses and projects, this core will provide them with statistical expertise for not only state-of-the-art analysis of their specific data sets, but also for the integration of each projects data with the data derived from the other projects. The integration of cross-project data for statistical analysis will not only be aided by the data management system described, but also by the fact that statistical testing of hypotheses has been an integral part of the development of the aims and hypotheses of each CCNMD project form the time of their inception.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 153 publications
