UAMS Hosts Leaders in Cancer Research Data System

By David Robinson

 Participating in the conference were UAMS’ Umit Topaloglu, John Speakman of the National Cancer Institute, Jose Galvez and Anthony Kerlavage.

Cheryl Lane of UAMS Information Technology with Edward Helton of the National Cancer Institute.
Laura Hutchins, M.D., discusses caBIG with conference participant Randall Alexander.

Laura Hutchins, M.D., discusses caBIG with conference participant Randall Alexander.

May 16, 2011 | Developers of the “World Wide Web of cancer research” came together May 9-10 in Little Rock to discuss advances in the network linking cancer researchers and physicians around the world.

About 100 information technology specialists and cancer researchers attended the session hosted by the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). The meeting focused on advancements in the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG), a virtual information network enabling researchers and physicians to share data and knowledge.

“We are honored to host this group of caBIG leaders from across the country. UAMS has been recognized as a leader in the caBIG initiative since we started implementing the program in 2007, and while we are proud to share our achievements, we also are eager to learn about the advancements of our colleagues at other cancer centers,” said Umit Topaloglu, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical informatics and assistant director of information technology research at UAMS.

Among those addressing the conference was John Speakman, chief program officer of the NCI Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology.

Through caBIG’s open-source software, organizations engaged in cancer research may share information, enabling widespread access to tools, data and infrastructure for the cancer and biomedical research communities.

In 2007, Laura Hutchins, M.D., director of the UAMS Division of Hematology/Oncology, received a more than $120,000 grant for UAMS to participate in the caBIG initiative. Early proponents of the program Cheryl Lane, director of research and development systems for UAMS Information Technology, and Shirley Gray, Cancer Institute administrator, also were instrumental in establishing the initiative at UAMS.

Since that time, the UAMS Cancer Institute became the first cancer center in the country to implement a suite of eight software components — including five caBig components and three developed at UAMS — designed to handle data for clinical trials in an efficient format.

In 2010, the Cancer Institute received Top 10 ranking in the 2010 Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards presented by the Health Care Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) for its caBIG efforts.

The UAMS Information Technology Research Team also has partnered with the Cancer Institute and the UAMS Tissue Bank to develop and implement numerous open source clinical research and biospecimen tools to support clinical research studies.

The teams have migrated the Tissue Bank to the caBIG caTISSUE software, a biospecimen identification and tracking software, and have customized and implemented participant registration software, a patient study calendar and study management software, among other programs.

To make the programs more user friendly, a clinical and translational research dashboard was created to house the tools.