Biomedical Informatics includes two groups, one that helps investigators tackle the analysis of large data sets (Bioinformatics Data Analysis), the other that provides a variety of security, data and hosting services (Academic Research Systems).
Program Co-directors: Jonathan Showstack, Mark Segal.
Both a part of CTSI and a unit of the UCSF Office of Academic and Administrative Information Systems, Academic Research Systems (ARS) supports the UCSF research community. ARS is an active participant on the CTSA Informatics Steering committee, leads the CTSA-wide Data Repository Working Group, and is co-sponsoring a CTSA-wide symposium on Data Repositories and Standards and Interoperability at the Mayo Clinic, September 27-28, 2007. ARS also provides the THREDS clinical data reporting function at SFGH
The Secure Data Environment
The Academic Research Systems group within the Office of Academic and Administrative Information Systems department is pleased to announce the availability of a secure data hosting service for research. Research data can be housed in a professionally staffed data center with the highest level of data security standards.
Data can be accessed from any PC or Mac connected to the UCSF internet directly or via VPN from outside the UCSF network. Document management software will provide a secure way for researchers to share files. Access to the research site requires investigators to login using their UCSF login ID and password. Principle Investigators can authorize staff to access individual files or folders, and full audit reports are available.
Investigators connect to a website using a browser and are able to store and retrieve encrypted data.
Help documentation is available on the site.
User documentation and training will be available.
For more information, please go to the OAAIS SDE web page.
Honest Broker Service
A HIPAA defined honest broker function, providing de-identification and re-identification of study data, while holding identifying data in escrow.
The Integrated Data Repository
A large scale data warehouse holding data derived from hospital and departmental clinical systems, tissue banks, and other life sciences (genomics, proteomics) data sources.
Server Hosting
Basic data center hosting for investigator owned and departmental systems.
CTSI Biomedical Informatics Co-Director: Jonathan Showstack, AVC, Co-CIO, OAAIS
ARS Director: Michael Kamerick
ARS Program Manager:Gail Harden
Current and emerging high-throughput biotechnologies generate large volumes of structured, high-dimensional data that demand customized analysis approaches. The Bioinformatics Data Analysis component of the Biomedical Informatics (BI) Program provides services to help investigators at UCSF and affiliated CTSI institutions analyze such data as well as designing associated studies.
Bioinformatics services are designed to be easy to access and comprehensive, and offer access to experts in sequence data, genomics, proteomics, microarrays and general biological data mining.
Assistance with grant development, analysis planning, or actual analysis of existing research data is proffered.
Initial consultations are free of charge, with subsequent services provided on a recharge basis. (During the initial start-up period, all consultations are free and only data analysis services are recharged.)
The Director of the Bioinformatics Program is Mark Segal, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, and Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Molecular Biostatistics. He coordinates, supervises and performs bioinformatics data analyses.
The Associate Director is David Erle, MD, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the UCSF Sandler Center Functional Genomics Core facility. He helps facilitate collaborations between clinical and translational scientists, statisticians, and members of UCSF cores with expertise in various microarray technologies.