Category: About LabKey

Emerging infectious diseases rapidly rise to prevalence and spread quickly across a population. In order to minimize their impact on public health, scientists must reach across geographical and organizational boundaries to share data that will help the global research community understand, contain, and ultimately cure aggressive infectious diseases. This type of large scale collaboration requires a robust research platform to centralize data and facilitate the shared generation of insight.

LabKey is helping teams around the globe combat emerging infectious diseases by providing a web-based data management platform to help overcome key collaboration challenges, including:

Integrating Heterogeneous Data

Scientists, public health officials, and medical professionals must be able to collect and integrate data from multiple sources (clinics, labs, etc.) in order to develop a comprehensive understanding of an emerging infectious disease. By housing data in one centralized location, researchers and collaborators can improve pathogen tracking and disease surveillance.

LabKey Server facilitates the collection and integration of data from a variety of sources by providing:

• Specialized import tools to integrate data from a variety of immunoassay types, including ELISA/ELISpot, luminex and flow cytometry
• Demographic datasets to capture metadata about individuals within a population
• A study framework that connects demographic, clinical, and analytical data in order to monitor the disease and/or treatment status of individuals over time

Creating an Adaptable Database

During the early stages of a disease outbreak data is collected rapidly and abundantly. As the scientific community’s understanding of a disease increases, the data collection needs of researchers will shift as they determine which pieces of information are most valuable. The central data management system used by infectious disease researchers must provide both high levels of flexibility and structure in order to keep up with these broad and evolving data needs.

LabKey Server provides a highly flexible environment for data capture, allowing teams to evolve their research environment using:

• A configurable and customizable user interface
• Powerful query tools to merge and present data
• APIs to import data from a wide variety of external sources and formats

Real-Time Data Sharing

In recent years, researchers working in the field of emerging infectious disease have begun to forgo traditional data publishing processes during times of a public health crisis, in favor of real-time data sharing. Real-time sharing of research observations and analytical data is helping accelerate the pace of understanding and development of treatments for aggressive infectious diseases.

LabKey Server facilitates real-time data sharing by providing:

• Study publication tools that allow research teams to curate and publish public-facing datasets without compromising the security of their original data
• Dynamic or static reports and visualizations to quickly summarize data for collaborators
• Easy export of data to common research formats for ancillary investigation

[vc_cta h2=”Explore LabKey Server” add_button=”bottom” btn_title=”Start Your Trial” btn_style=”custom” btn_custom_background=”#779e47″ btn_custom_text=”#ffffff” btn_shape=”round” btn_align=”left” btn_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.labkey.com%2Ftrial-sign-up%2F|||”]With the right tools, research teams have the ability to more rapidly understand and eradicate emerging infectious disease. Sign-up for a free trial to see how LabKey Server can help your team overcome these and other key research challenges.[/vc_cta][vc_custom_heading text=”Related Resource” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:300%20light%20regular%3A300%3Anormal” tm_text_transform=”uppercase” css=”.vc_custom_1541533930179{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;}”]

User Presentation

Real-Time Open Data Sharing of Zika Virus Research Using LabKey

The laboratory of David O’Connor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has been at the forefront of Zika virus research since the disease’s 2015-2016 outbreak in the Americas. The laboratory conducts studies with non-human primates to establish the natural history of infection and create a model that can be used to target future vaccine development. A key component of the lab’s work is the usage of the LabKey Server platform for real-time open data sharing of zika virus data with researchers worldwide and aggregation of diverse types of data that have been contributed by a large group of researchers into a central place.

In this presentation Michael Graham of the O’Connor lab shares how their team partnered with LabKey to provide open access to data during this public health emergency. Watch presentation >

A standard nomenclature is incredibly valuable for teams using LabKey Server to do collaborative biomedical research and becomes increasingly more important as they grow in size and data volume. Defining how data fields should be named is essential to the efficiency of teams, as it aids both those generating and/or capturing data as well as those conducting data analysis.

As you get started using LabKey Server, keep in mind the best practices below for defining and maintaining a standard nomenclature in your lab:

Define Nomenclature Up Front

Standardizing nomenclature may seem like an unnecessary up-front investment, but ultimately your team will experience less confusion and more efficiency as they progress with their work. Empower your team by allowing them to have a voice as you define which terms will be used in your research. By including team members in the process, they will feel more invested and be more likely to adhere to standard naming conventions.

Use LabKey QC Features to Ensure Consistency

In an ideal world, all team members will consistently use the nomenclature agreed upon by the team when adding data to your LabKey Server. But in practical application, it is more likely that from time to time a team member will mistakenly enter “H20” instead of the lab standard name “Water” into their ingredient list, potentially breaking standard reports, grid views, etc.

Using LabKey quality control features like lookups, aliases, and validators in key fields can help combat this scenario. A LabKey lookup will allow you to to map several common variations of a term to a desired standard field value. For example, an administrator could configure a lookup so that “H20” and “Tap Water,” common deviations from the standard, would both map to “Water.” These types of lookups allow teams to maintain the integrity of their data, in spite of inevitable human error.

Administrators can also use to regex or range validators on new data being entered to ensure that users are entering valid data into the system. By placing these restrictions, teams can improve data entry and help analyses down the pipeline.

Evaluate and Adjust

It’s easy to enforce the use of standard nomenclature when your team is small and your research is in its early stages. But over time, as teams grow and become further removed from when nomenclature guidelines were established, they can develop a “laboratory shift” in how things are named. In order to stay on top of your terminology and keep your data clean, plan to regularly review and assess your standard nomenclature. Are there additional terms that need to be defined? Have any standard terms become outdated? Are certain terms consistently being used incorrectly? Making small adjustments as your research needs evolve will help maintain the integrity of your data.

LabKey helps enforce nomenclature standards, leading to cleaner data and more efficient research. Sign-up for a free trial to see these and other core LabKey Server features in action. 

Related Documentation

• Lookup Columns 
• Field Level Validation
• Data Quality Control

Integrated NLP data management solution speeds clinical data abstraction and curation for disease registries, clinical research and quality reporting

Cambridge, England and Seattle, WA, USA — September 25, 2018 — Linguamatics, the leading natural language processing (NLP) text analytics provider, and LabKey, a provider of bioinformatics data management solutions, today announced an integrated solution designed to streamline the extraction and curation of valuable insights from large volumes of unstructured clinical notes and reports.

With Linguamatics NLP engine I2E, healthcare and life sciences teams can significantly reduce the manual processes involved in information analysis and extraction. When integrated with LabKey Server’s document processing pipeline and curation user interface (UI), the combined solution provides an end-to-end pathway for unstructured data from acquisition to analysis.

“Our partnership with LabKey empowers healthcare teams to achieve high accuracy data extraction in a wide variety of use cases” said Simon Beaulah, senior director, healthcare at Linguamatics. “Customers can speed extraction of EHR data into cancer registries and clinical data warehouses; reduce the manual burden associated with clinical study review; and rapidly extract relevant population health data and quality metrics to improve business critical HEDIS quality metrics reporting and patient outcomes.”

The LabKey and Linguamatics relationship is based on collaborative work with the NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program. This project has resulted in an NLP pipeline that automates the annotation and review of pathology reports, to build a large gold standard for machine learning training.

“Combining LabKey’s processing pipeline, workflow, and curation UI with Linguamatics’ NLP capabilities provides a complete solution for organizations that need to extract valuable information from large volumes of unstructured clinical data,” explained Adam Rauch, vice president of product management at LabKey. “This integrated system empowers abstractors and reviewers with the technologies they need to accelerate the extraction process from end-to-end.”

About Linguamatics

Linguamatics transforms unstructured big data into big insights to advance human health and wellbeing. A world leader in deploying innovative natural language processing (NLP)-based text mining for high-value knowledge discovery and decision support, Linguamatics’ solutions are used by top commercial, academic and government organizations, including 18 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and leading US healthcare organizations.

Linguamatics I2E is used to mine a wide variety of text resources, such as scientific literature, patents, Electronic Health Records (EHRs), clinical trials data, news feeds, social media and proprietary content. I2E can be deployed as an in-house enterprise system, or as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) on the cloud.

About LabKey

LabKey provides software solutions to help teams overcome the data management and workflow challenges faced in today’s biomedical research environment. LabKey works hand-in-hand with clients to understand the complex needs of modern labs and develop flexible, scalable, extensible systems to address them.

LabKey Server is an open source software platform for integrating biomedical research data and managing laboratory workflows. LabKey Server is highly configurable and is used by research organizations across the globe to provide reliable, scalable environment for research data. [vc_row gap=”30″][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1537808118148{padding: 30px !important;background-color: #ededed !important;}”]

LabKey Media Contact

Kelsey Gibson, Marketing Manager
LabKey

+ 1 425.308.7033
kelseyg@labkey.com[vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1537808128682{padding: 30px !important;background-color: #ededed !important;}”]

Linguamatics Media Contact

Michelle Ronan Noteboom, Sr. Account Director
Amendola Communications

+ 1 512.426.2870
mnoteboom@acmarketingpr.com

CAR T and other cellular immunotherapy trials are rapidly expanding worldwide due to their high success rates and continued scientific advancements that are helping generate new therapeutic targets. The development of these advanced immunotherapies requires extensive data collection and collaboration between research scientists, clinical teams, and trial subjects. In order to manage immunotherapy data efficiently and improve the feedback loop from current and ongoing trials many research teams are seeking out secure, web-based data management solutions in lieu of traditional paper based systems to manage their trial data.

LabKey is actively partnering with teams conducting immunotherapy trials to provide LabKey Server-based solutions to overcome a wide variety of challenges and accelerate their research, including:

Integrating Heterogeneous Immunotherapy Data

Cutting edge cellular immunotherapy trials rely on data generated at multiple sources often including the cellular manufacturing facility, the clinic gathering subject data, and research labs exploring the cellular profile of the therapy. Teams conducting CAR T and other immunotherapy trials need reliable software tools to integrate this heterogeneous data and provide a comprehensive view of the therapy’s efficacy and safety to clinicians and researchers.

LabKey Server helps immunotherapy research teams efficiently integrate heterogeneous data by providing:

• A data-aware study module that can recognize and integrate disparate vendor datasets, alias subjects and track visits by name or by date
• Built-in and customizable integration with electronic data capture systems and case report forms

Longitudinal Study Data Capture

Lengthy follow-up periods are typically required for subjects undergoing therapy involving genetically modified cells. Managing trial data over time in a secure and scalable manner quickly becomes very challenging for paper-based systems.

LabKey Server helps support the consistent collection and storage of longitudinal study data throughout the lifetime of a trial by providing:

• A configurable study progress report that allows trial staff to manage samples and tests, ensuring that every result is accounted for.
• The flexibility to customize and modify the system as the needs of the database grow and change, without compromising historic data.
• Professional support and services to ensure that the system is maintained throughout the life of the trial.

Explore this Longitudinal Study in LabKey Server

This example study compares various anti-retroviral (ARVs) treatment regimens by monitoring HIV-1 disease progression in 122 participants.

Compliant Collaboration

Sharing reports and data with collaborators improves research, innovation, and ultimately subject care. Maintaining compliance and having the ability to quickly share data and reports is an important topic to tackle in immunotherapy research where subject safety and care is the top priority.

LabKey Server improves reporting and collaboration amongst collaborators conducting immunotherapy trials by providing:

• Dynamic and static reporting tables and visualizations that can be shared as-needed
• Web-based access to a central platform for data sharing
• The ability to remove PHI fields or provide randomized IDs when sharing
  information with collaborators

[vc_cta h2=”Explore LabKey Server” add_button=”bottom” btn_title=”Start Your Trial” btn_style=”custom” btn_custom_background=”#779e47″ btn_custom_text=”#ffffff” btn_shape=”round” btn_align=”left” btn_link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.labkey.com%2Ftrial-sign-up%2F|||”]With the right tools, immunotherapy research teams can push the pace of this cutting edge research even further, increasing trial efficiency to bring life saving therapies to more patients faster. Sign-up for a free trial to see how LabKey Server can help your team overcome these, and other common immunotherapy research challenges.[/vc_cta][vc_custom_heading text=”Related Resource” font_container=”tag:h1|text_align:left” google_fonts=”font_family:Roboto%3A100%2C100italic%2C300%2C300italic%2Cregular%2Citalic%2C500%2C500italic%2C700%2C700italic%2C900%2C900italic|font_style:300%20light%20regular%3A300%3Anormal” tm_text_transform=”uppercase” css=”.vc_custom_1541533930179{padding-top: 10px !important;padding-bottom: 10px !important;}”]

User Presentation

Using Existing LabKey Modules to Build a Platform for Immunotherapy Clinical Trials

The Correlative Studies Laboratory (CSL), part of the Immunotherapy Integration Hub at Seattle Children’s, focuses on understanding how reprogrammed T cells react in each patient in terms of their persistence, functionality and efficiency at reducing tumor burden. This data, combined with manufacturing and clinical data generated during clinical trials, enable researchers to answer pressing questions with minimal time and resource investment.

In this presentation Olivia Finney, shares how the CSL is working with LabKey to integrate, analyze and securely share data in order to create a truly translational research model. Watch presentation >

LabKey Server gives teams the flexibility to assign permissions to individual users or to security groups. While teams are setting up and implementing LabKey Server, assigning user permissions individually often seems like the easiest route, but for growing teams or active labs that strategy can become an administrative challenge in the long run. As your team and/or use of LabKey Server grows, it becomes much easier for administrators to control permissions with User Groups.

What’s more important than which method you choose, is taking the time to define your permissions strategy up front. A defined and documented policy will help make managing security easier to implement and maintain long term. Take a look at the best practices below to set yourself up for success when creating a permissions strategy:

1. Define User Groups

Think about the functional requirements of your team; are there members that will need read-only access and some members that need to enter in data? By splitting out what the needs of each person are, you can easily define user groups based on common access needs.

2. Consider Folder Structure

Take your LabKey Server folder structure into consideration when defining security groups; should your team members have the same permissions to all folders? Do certain team members need the same level of access but to different folders? Use your folder structure to help further segment users into appropriate security groups.

3. Monitor and Adjust

Review and refine user groups over time as the use of LabKey Server continues to grow. Administrators should review their permission settings at a regular frequency to make sure permissions for a User Group are accurate and appropriate for the current situation. Use LabKey Server’s Impersonate feature to view access as each User Group and verify that the permissions assigned to each group are correct.

Get started securely sharing data with team members and collaborators using LabKey Server! Sign-up for a free trial to see LabKey Server permission management features in action.