Information and commmunication technology
The Cancer Sciences Division has its own dedicated specialist Information technology group that provides specialist support to laboratory and clinical research staff.
The department has 6 full time members of staff that consist of 3 analysis programmers 2 support staff and head of group.
The IT department specialises in writing innovative web based application, for supporting clinical research management within the NHS, and currently provides these services in some form to over 200 NHS hospitals, and some 3000 users.
The Information Management team support 14 servers, including 8 Terabytes of data storage to allow other core facilities to maintaining large volumes of research imaging from instrumentation.
The IT group currently is working on the following projects, with specific funding.
EDGE Research Management System
Version 3 of the widely used application is now providing more support to clinical research though out the NHS. Based on the. NET framework, EDGE is a enterprise wide systems supporting all research staff involved the delivery of research in the NHS.
http://www.soton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2008/jun/08_118.shtml
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2010/feb/10_10.shtml
For information please contact the EDGE support team on 5164.
CIMS
CIMS is a ‘Cytogenetic Information Management System’, which was developed for the Leukaemia Research Cytogenetics Group. It is currently used to store patient, sample, cytogenetic, and result information for patients with both Leukaemia and Myeloma and is deployed in Southampton, Salisbury and Newcastle.
For information on CIMS please contact the support team on 5164.
SlideBox
Slidebox is a web-based application written to assist with the POSH study (Prospective study of Outcomes in Sporadic versus Hereditary Breast Cancer). The application provides Pathologists with the tools to view stained tumour sections at magnifications up to 40x, and to report their findings using a set of standardised forms. The data collected from these forms is sent to Statisticians for further analysis. It is intended that the study will collect data from 3000 slides, each slide having been examined by two Pathologists. The use of a web-based application allows this data to be gathered without the need for the physical distribution of the pathology slides to the Pathologists.
ImageBox
ImageBox is a web-based application enabling Radiologists working within the POSH Study (Prospective study of Outcomes in Sporadic versus Hereditary Breast Cancer) to view Mammograms, Ultrasounds Scans and MRI Scans using any generic web browser. The application supplies multiple images (typically 4-8 mammograms and 1-3 ultrasound images) from each case in the study, and collects information on a set of standardised forms which are displayed alongside the images. The data from these forms will be analysed by statisticians. The use of a web-based application allows this data to be gathered without the need for the physical distribution of the images to the Radiologists.
RMS
Resource Management System is a web-based application written for the Wellcome Trust in Southampton. The application provides facilities to record booking information for the various resources used by the Trust. These resources include meeting rooms, consulting rooms and surgery facilities among others. The system records information for each booking, including the study being undertaken and patient details. Bookings may be made in blocks of 30 minutes, may extend over any period, and may recur any number of times. A number of reports are provided analyzing bookings by study and by time. A full occupancy report gives an analysis of resource usage by week.
Clinical Research Data Collaborative
To explore the use of collaborative approaches to provision of data management systems to clinical trials units within the UK.
Virtualisation project
The IT infrastructure of the Cancer Sciences Division, is undertaking a massive revision of how it works. Moving in to the future and the requirements of the good clinical practise, as well as to support other regulatory requirements of the division, the IT infrastructure is going to move to a fully resilient virtual server environment.
This new environment is providing over 8 terabits of central iSCSI storage with the capacity for 30 virtual servers to be running. This project will ensure that we can continue to provide high levels of storage for instrumentation work, as well as continue to expand the hosted services of EDGE to the NHS. Further we will support the activity of the new Clinical Trials Unit.
The virtualisation platform will utilise VMware meaning that in the case of failure of systems, in one location, failover will come online immediately within another physical location, ensure the very highest standard of continuity.
The staff
James Batchelor Head of ICT / Ethics and Data Protection officer
David Miller Senior Analyst Programmer
Andy Bush Analyst Programmer
Kevin Wheeler Analyst Programmer
Lawrence Surey Support Analyst
Tobias Carleton-Pragnell Support Analyst
The group can be contacted on 02380 795164 or email csdcomp@soton.ac.uk
