Support for oncology research

A well-known cancer research and care center in Massachusetts is using technology from InforSense to analyze patient data on the fly. Principal investigators and researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute are using InforSense's ClinicalSense, a Web-based tool for cohort selection and clinical decision support, as well as its translation research solution to support improved disease understanding and patient care in oncology.

John Quackenbush, professor of biostatistics and computational biology, says, "At the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, we need to have access to a wide range of clinical, experimental and patient specimen data that exists in disparate data stores. To drive cancer research and advance cancer care, we need an efficient way to integrate this data and make it available to a diverse group of developers, statisticians, study designers and biologists. We chose this solution because it provides advanced data integration and ETL capabilities, combined with analytical power and process flexibility. Using it, analyses can be quickly developed, modified and deployed via a Web interface to our scientists."

According to a press release from InforSense, ClinicalSense allows users to "slice and dice" summary clinical data, compare sample relevant characteristics and select appropriate sample subsets to optimize study design. After the studies are completed, experimental data is integrated into the InforSense platform where it is analyzed using statistical tools to identify biomarkers or develop predictive models.

Statisticians and computational biologists pre-build sophisticated workflows to perform the analysis and present it back via further Web pages. That provides a self-service portal to researchers that supports direct access to data and analysis workflows, saving time and ensuring that consistent best-practice analysis is applied, InforSense adds.