Sad to hear from our colleagues at the National Cancer Research Institute that their Informatics Initiative is closing down in March next year.
Good news, however, in that the source code
which supports their award-winning Oncology Information Exchange (ONIX) platform freely
available to the community including their APIs to e.g. Entrez and various other databases.
It
will be available under Creative Commons licences which will allow re-use,
development and extension of the software – but no one organization will have
exclusive rights to publish the resource and derivations will need to recognize
the original development work as an output of NCRI Informatics.
If you
think your organisation would be interested let us know here at bioinformaticsolutions @ gmail . com or email them directly (finlay.macdougall @ ncri.org .uk).
ONIX
currently offers a number of functions which may be useful to bioinformaticians:
· The
Resource Catalogue: a
tool that brings together and describes a diversity of biomedical resources
which include databases, analytical tools, projects, initiatives and research
technologies. This information has either been entered directly to ONX forming
the ONIX Catalogue or is contained in one of the other catalogues searchable
from the Resource Catalogue:
o caBIG
- the list of grid services currently available from the US National Cancer
Institute's caBIG® programme
o BioCatalogue
- A curated registry of biological Web Services. It provides an open platform
for biological Web Services registration, annotation and monitoring
o NCRI
Cancer Biosample Directory - A directory of biosamples (tissue, blood and other
biological samples, including extracted derivatives) held in the UK in cancer
biobanks. Searchable by a variety of parameters, the directory provides
information about how to contact custodians and how access may be
possible
o NCRI
Cancer Clinical Trials Biosample Directory - A directory of biosamples (tissue,
blood and other biological samples, including extracted derivatives) held in the
UK from cancer clinical trial collections. Searchable by a variety of
parameters, the directory provides information about how to contact custodians
and how access may be possible.
o NHS IC
DoCDat - DoCDat is an information resource for all those involved in clinical
audit, clinical governance, health services management and health services
research. It provides information about databases containing patient level and
administrative data concerned with clinical care in the UK
· The
Quick Search (with
advanced options): searches simultaneously across a range of biomedical
databases from genetics to clinical trials and access a diversity of types of
information from publications to biological images
· The
Cancer InfoMatrix (CIM): the
InfoMatrix provides information about work being conducted to support good data
management in cancer research through the development of data
standards. Biomedical domains are arranged across the horizontal axis
of the CIM while on the vertical axis are broad areas of data management that
enable data sharing, access and exchange. Clicking on a cell within the CIM will
take you to a list describing each initiative in that area as well as other
relevant information. The cells in the Cancer InfoMatrix are colour coded using
a "traffic-light-battery system" to indicate the degree of progress in each
area
No comments:
Post a Comment