Winship Cancer Center Support Grant: caBIG® Deployment

The Emory Winship Cancer Institute and the Center for Comprehensive Informatics will carry out activities and provide additional resources, as needed, to achieve the success criteria outlined below:

• Clinical Trials Framework Success Criteria: We will carry out three major activities: 1) one or more components of the caBIG® framework at our institution, integrating those components with pre-existing systems and potentially with legacy data; 2) caBIG® harmonized Common Data Elements (CDEs) will be used to represent the information that is collected in the context of compatible clinical trials activities; and 3) we will identify clinical data that can be made electronically available through the caBIG® data sharing federation. We will leverage the clinical trials framework to support radiation treatment uses cases in collaboration with Emory based radiation therapy clinical research and caBIG® in vivo imaging workspace activities.
• Life Science Distribution Success Criteria: For successful deployment of the caBIG life sciences framework, we will carry out the following activities: 1) we will deploy and maintain a functional caGrid node at the institution with appropriate security configuration following the security standards and requirements outlined by the caGrid deployment package; 2) one or more of the caGrid-enabled applications in the life sciences domain will be deployed and integrated into the activities at the center to manage and share relevant data. We will also connect appropriate local data sources and applications as caGrid-enabled services; and 3) we will make the Grid node accessible to the national caGrid and provide access to appropriate data. One of the contexts in which the life science distribution framework applications will be deployed is the newly initiated In Silico Center for Translational Neuro-oncology Informatics (In Silico Brain Tumor Research Center; ISBTRC). The ISBTRC is a multi-institutional, multi-scale integrative study, which leverages complementary molecular, full-slide digital pathology, and radiology image brain tumor data as well as de-identified clinical data obtained in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Rembrandt, and Vasari studies. The ISBTRC also plans to generate additional data by carrying out image analysis based laser captured micro-dissection on institutional tissue specimens followed by targeted high throughput genetic and genomic studies. The ISBTRC activities will be coordinated with this project to ensure optimal use of caBIG technologies and effective sharing of ISBTRC data, tools, and results with the community.
• Data Sharing and Security Framework Success Criteria: Success with respect to the Data Sharing and Security bundle requires commitment to participating in the caBIG Data Sharing and Intellectual Capital (DSIC) Workspace. In addition, we will begin the evaluation of use and integration of the DSIC Data Sharing Framework into our workflow in relevant areas. For this purpose, we will make use of a decision framework for evaluating the sensitivity of data and appropriate access terms and appropriate use of model provisions for key agreements (IRB requirements, data use agreements, MTAs, etc.). This will help in expediting data sharing and the adoption of security policies and procedures for caGrid-wide authentication and authorization.