Research Informatics Support for NICHD's Division of Intramural Research
- Ryan Dale, MS, PhD, Scientific Information Officer, Head, Computer Support Services Core
- Asma Idriss, PMP, MS, Program Manager
- Patricia Pullen, MBA, Project Manager
- Sean Ivusic, MS, Database Support Lead
- Kesa Koresko, MS, Senior DB/BI Specialist
- Loc Vu, BS, Lead Software Engineer
- Matt Breymaier, BS, Senior Bio/Application Software Engineer
- Louis Battuello, PMP, BS, Subject Matter Expert
- Nareg Bakirci, MS, Website Developer
- Nicki Swan, BA, Graphic Designer
- Rana Alneaimy, MD, Documentation Specialist
- Rolanda Bailey, BS, Documentation Specialist
- Audrey Harrell, MS, Documentation Specialist
- Tamara Prodanov, MD, Documentation Specialist
- Vida Bayat Mokhtari, MD, Information Specialist
- Kelly Colligan, BS, Information Specialist
- Kami Emanuel, Information Specialist
- Breanna Mcgriff, BS, Information Specialist
- George Tran, Information Specialist
The Computer Support Services Core (CSSC) facility provides informatics and research services to intramural investigators of the Division of Intramural Research (DIR), NICHD, in the following key areas: core IT support, clinical informatics, custom software development for scientific and administrative support, and biological visualization services.
Core IT services
During the past year, the CSSC continued supporting reliable, secure, and efficient information technology solutions. This includes acquisition, maintenance, and support for licensed software used by the DIR community, e.g., GraphPad Prism, Amira, Alamut, DNASTAR Lasergene, MathWorks MATLAB, SnapGene, PyMol, and FlowJo, as well as cross-platform desktop, server, and application hosting in the Rock Spring Data Center.
Clinical informatics
CSSC continued to support and develop applications related to clinical and translational medicine, including the Clinical Trials Database (CTDB) project. Such informatics tools allow researchers to design, collect, and report clinical observations related to natural history and interval-based studies. The total number of protocols and research projects supported by the CTDB team for 15 NIH institutes increased to 720 protocols. The Global Question Library expanded to over 274,000 research questions. Our software development group completed two CTDB releases. Features included improvements in the Quality Assurance module, Forms module, and Barcode printing. We supported the Clinical Trial Survey System (CTSS), an application for patient self-reporting, servicing 90 active protocols. The team completed one CTSS release and has rolled out 48 CTSS redesigned websites. CTDB application also supports the NICHD Office of Clinical Director central biorepository and eligibility monitoring. Through the global library in CTDB, several institutes are tracking CVs, trainings, and certificate documentation of the research teams. Since its inception, data from CTDB supported over 1,500 NICHD publications.
The database development and reporting team continued integrations with other NIH institutes. The team completed an integration with NHBLI that receives data from the CMRCoop (Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Cooperative) system. The team continued to work with various NIMH systems to incorporate data from these systems into the CTDB data-reporting environment, specifically working towards integrating the NIH Tool box system used by investigators at NIMH. We continued supporting data marts as new reporting requirements appear and migrating data as needed. The team added extract data from CITs Biomedical Translational Research Information System (BTRIS) to support investigators research, in addition to migrating data into the data mart from various external research organizations (MedStar, Inova, John Hopkins, etc.). The team has upgraded all supporting Oracle databases to 19c and intends to complete final production upgrade to Oracle19c by the end of the calendar year. The team successfully upgraded the Cognos reporting environment to IBM Cognos 11.1.4 and is working towards upgrading the environment to IBM Cognos 11.2.2. Additionally, the team and has worked closely with various principal investigators (PIs) across the institutes to provide both management and research-related reports for clinical-related studies, publishing over 650 reports in the past year. The team applies the latest patches to all production database environments to ensure continued uninterrupted services and monitors the successful completion of backup and data mart transformation services.
Custom software development for scientific and administrative support
The CSSC provides custom software development for the DIR's scientific and administrative community.
We continued to enhance the Manuscript Tracking System (MTrac), a web-based application that automates the clearance and approval process for manuscripts in the DIR.
The DIRweb application supports several activities: the NICHD Annual Report, PI and Fellows' retreats, Training tracking, Fellows’ progress report, and Administrative Management Branch (AMB) personnel and travel package tracking. The DIRweb includes lab training web services for the NIH Enterprise Directory and Division of Occupational Health and Safety Training.
The team continued to release enhancements to the Fellows Annual Progress Report, a unified means for tracking and mentoring intramural trainees as well as for easing the re-appointment process. This solution provided the Office of Education with useful metrics regarding mentoring and training programs. We also updated the Exit Survey feature, a short survey allowing DIR Fellows a platform for providing feedback.
We continued developing new features and improvements for the Package Tracking module used by the DIR AMB, providing AMB staff real-time accuracy metrics for personnel and travel package compilation. The CSSC team continues to develop and support several feedback systems to support real-time customer satisfaction collection. These include surveys for the AMB, the Office of the Clinical Director, laboratory administrative support staff, and NICHD's Administrative Services Branch. The system also offers more detailed feedback submissions periodically, along with comprehensive response metrics.
The team finalized a new module: the Capital Equipment/Expenditure Request Tracking System. The system will enable users to efficiently submit requests through the review process, while allowing administrative staff to track requests through the workflow process. The project has been well received enough to allow potential offerings to the NICHD extramural community as well as the Office of the Director.
The CSSC team continued to improve Cost Tracker, an application that permits capturing, organizing, and reporting various expenses on a per-protocol basis. The work is done closely with the Office of the Clinical Director to improve protocol cost vs. effectiveness and a protocol-cost estimator module.
We helped develop and deploy a web application for visualizing single-cell RNA sequencing data from several timepoints in zebrafish embryos and larvae, enabling the research community to explore and interact with a rich dataset, so as to gain insight into early vertebrate development.
Scientific communication support
The CSSC team provided DIR laboratories with scientific communications and media services, including publication support, and website support. Those services were provided to the NICHD DIR Annual Report, the DIR Annual Fellows Retreat, the DIR Annual Scientific Retreat, the Anita B. Roberts Lecture Series, and the NICHD research labs and medical training programs. We supported the NICHD Office of Education by producing a monthly newsletter, the monthly SD Bulletin and The NICHD Connection in collaboration with Intramural Fellows. We continued maintaining websites for the NICHD DIR Annual Report.
The CSSC continued to provide a platform for conducting scientific review by the Board of Scientific Counselors, administrative intranet support, and business operations.
Additional Funding
- The Clinical Trials Database (CTDB) project receives funding from other NIH Intramural Institute or Center programs, including NINR, NIMH, NIDCR, NIEHS, NIAMS, NINDS, CC, NHLBI, NIDCD, NHGRI, NCCIH, NIMHD, and NIDDK.
Collaborators
- Richard Childs, MD, Clinical Director, NHLBI, Bethesda, MD
- Maryland Pao, MD, Clinical Director, NIMH, Bethesda, MD
- Forbes D. Porter, MD, PhD, Section on Molecular Dysmorphology, Clinical Director, NICHD, Bethesda, MD
- Jack Yanovski, MD, PhD, Section on Growth and Obesity, NICHD, Bethesda, MD
Contact
For more information, visit https://www.nichd.nih.gov/about/org/dir/osd/cf/ucss.
