Abstract
The rapid expansion of biomedical research has brought substantial scientific and administrative data management challenges to modern core facilities. Scientifically, a core facility must be able to manage experimental workflow and the corresponding set of large and complex scientific data. It must also disseminate experimental data to relevant researchers in a secure and expedient manner that facilitates collaboration and provides support for data interpretation and analysis. Administratively, a core facility must be able to manage the scheduling of its equipment and to maintain a flexible and effective billing system to track material, resource, and personnel costs and charge for services to sustain its operation. It must also have the ability to regularly monitor the usage and performance of its equipment and to provide summary statistics on resources spent on different categories of research. To address these informatics challenges, we introduce a comprehensive system called MIMI (multimodality, multiresource, information integration environment) that integrates the administrative and scientific support of a core facility into a single web-based environment. We report the design, development, and deployment experience of a baseline MIMI system at an imaging core facility and discuss the general applicability of such a system in other types of core facilities. These initial results suggest that MIMI will be a unique, cost-effective approach to addressing the informatics infrastructure needs of core facilities and similar research laboratories.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following faculty and staff members for feedback, support, and encouragement during the development of this project: Chris Flask, Raymond Muzic, Janet Schiciano, Joan Schenkel, Jeff Duerk, Mark Chance, Stan Gerson, James Jacobberger, Anne Duli, Keiji Takamoto, Adam Troy, and Gurkan Bebek. This project is partially funded by support from NIH K25EB004467, CCIR, Case Center for Proteomics, and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.
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Szymanski, J., Wilson, D.L. & Zhang, GQ. MIMI: Multimodality, Multiresource, Information Integration Environment for Biomedical Core Facilities. J Digit Imaging 22, 535–547 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-007-9083-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10278-007-9083-y