Facilitating search for medical researchers

Columbia University Medical Center has chosen an enterprise search solution from ISYS Search Software to provide fast, dependable access to a large collection of regulatory documents and medical studies.

CUMC faculty members conduct research to discover new techniques to fight disease and improve health, and the medical center is known for its patient care as well as its health and medical education. ISYS:desktop will help CUMC's Clinical Trials Office staff search, navigate and find important files in its large repository of documents. Documents produced by the Western Institutional Review Board, whose mission includes protecting the rights and welfare of the human research subject—and CUMC's Institutional Review Board are collected as PDF files and stored locally for quick access via ISYS.

"We chose the solution after seeing it met our needs in a very cost-effective manner," says Dr. John F. Ennever, medical director of CUMC's Clinical Trials Office. "We were able to fine-tune the product to make it work just as needed. We are now considering further uses of the technology to help us streamline our archival and retrieval of documents."

Among CUMC's clinical breakthroughs were the first blood test for cancer, the first medical use of the laser and the first success transfer of genes from one cell to another, according to a recent press release from ISYS.