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The Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Education at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) has developed integrated, cross-platform database software to meet the institution's administrative and regulatory requirements. This user-friendly software, named Georgetown MedNetwork, has proven valuable in identifying research opportunities, helping to recruit faculty, facilitating development and establishment of program project grants, preparing grant applications, and administering interdisciplinary graduate programs. The MedNetwork's ability to serve as a front end to larger database systems and import information from existing legacy databases can be combined with Internet client software to create an easy method for storing and publishing data in both text and graphic form. The system has been helpful in orienting new faculty and students about research and teaching activities at GUMC.
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Abstract
The Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Education at Georgetown University Medical Center has developed integrated, cross-platform database software to meet the institution's administrative and regulatory requirements. This userfriendly software, named Georgetown MedNetwork, has proven valuable in identifying research opportunities, helping to recruit faculty, facilitating development and establishment of program project grants, preparing grant applications, and administering interdisciplinary graduate programs. The MedNetwork's ability to serve as a front end to larger database systems and import information from existing legacy databases demonstrates a functional model for creating cost-effective, easily maintained research administrative computer systems. Report and search functions from multiple databases can be combined with Internet client software to create an easy method for storing and publishing data in both text and graphic form. The system has been helpful in orienting new faculty and students about research and teaching activities at GUMC.
Introduction
In 1991, a new Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Education (ODRGE) was established at Georgetown University Medical Center to supervise all activities related to research and graduate biomedical education. Responsibilities include preaward grants management ($100+ million awarded in FY94); regulatory committee oversight (Animal Care and Use, Institutional Review Board, and Biosafety); technology transfer; environmental health and safety; research space allocation; and the Research Resources Facility (including all animal research facilities). Educational oversight includes the MD/PhD program and master's and doctoral degree programs. ODRGE also manages and oversees the Continuing Professional Education and Consulting Biostatistics offices.
Essential to the successful functioning of an office of this size and complexity is the availability of integrated information tools to meet highly diverse administrative tasks. Input from the dean, associate deans, and administrative staff was used to establish a design blueprint, or "wish list," of features to be incorporated into a proposed database system. The defined needs included the ability to search and summarize basic and biographical faculty information, publications, regulatory committee protocols, laboratory profiles, and funding award information. Moreover, the search capabilities required highly relational, cross-platform data and graphic fields that would be accessible to users of both Macintosh and Windows-based systems. A search was initiated to determine which existing integrated databases could meet the defined needs. This search-conducted via surveys of GU's existing information technology, commercial products, and other university-developed systemsindicated that such an integrated database system was not available. It would be necessary to customize our own design. Development costs, as well as other considerations such as direct experience with relevant academic issues, weighed against hiring costly commercial/corporate database developers.
The dean of Research and Graduate Education assigned the project to an inhouse development team of three Computer & Laboratory Services Division FTEs whose duties included management of all ODRGE local area networks as well as hardware and software applications support. The project, dubbed the Georgetown MedNetwork, required a custom database system that would be flexible, easy to use, quick to modify, and cost efficient. Like most universities and colleges, the Medical Center's installed base of computers is heterogenous, and the MedNetwork was planned to look and run almost identically on both Mac and IBM-compatible systems and networks. Based on past history and present analysis, we concluded that the computer industry will likely continue its move toward more, not fewer, operating systems in coming years. Therefore, our strategy for all computer program development would be to run all integrated databases on multiple platforms.
The first database to be developed was the basic/biographical, or "electronic CV" module. This faculty information resource was progressively linked to the subsequently designed databases, including funding opportunities and announcements, laboratory profiles, regulatory information, graduate education, sponsored programs, and technology transfer.
To date, the system has been used by faculty, staff, and administrators for a variety of purposes, including assisting faculty members to identify research collaborators in their fields; identifying funding opportunities and agency information; recruiting new faculty members by supplying ad hoc reports of specific GUMC faculty research publications; and providing electronic methods for preparing, submitting, and tracking proposals for animal and human research.
System Components
The Georgetown MedNetwork is an intuitive system that allows users to pointand-click their way through useful information without the worry of remembering complicated computer commands and function keys. Information searches and reports can be generated easily by double-clicking active buttons, or keying in the first few letters of names, departments, publication terms, research keywords, or any other basic and biographical information in the system.
There are seven standard menu options: File, Edit, Reports, Select Database, Comments, Search, and Print. These pull-down menus permit easy access to the many features of the MedNetwork. For example, Search features are designed as standard MedNetwork formats. The menus, used to select subsets of records such as "Search Publications/Journals," are used conjointly with standard report formats to produce specific written or digital documents.
Report destinations include printer, screen, page preview, file, port, clipboard, and publish (and subscribe). Screen reports allow users to "lasso" (capture) text from the screen, and then cut-and-paste into concurrently running programs, such as word processing or spreadsheets. Ad hoc reporting features allow researchers to query the MedNetwork and create customized reports in response to specific needs. Character fields can contain up to 32,000 alphanumeric characters each, and these fields can be easily added or modified. Number fields have a maximum of 15 significant figures. The Georgetown MedNetwork presently includes the following integrated modules:
Basic Faculty Information
Figure 1 illustrates a single screen record that offers Basic Faculty Information, including investigator's full name, degree(s), office and laboratory addresses, phone numbers, academic and administrative titles, ID number, date of birth, academic and administrative ranks, research interests, broad areas of research, and biographical sketch. A graphic field is included to display a color or black-and-white photo of the researcher. Multilevel password protection ensures confidentiality.
The Basic Information Record is presented in Figure 2. Check boxes indicate whether research involves animal studies, human studies, radioactive, cell/tissue culture, toxic chemicals, biohazards, technology transfer, international activities, and health policy. Four interdisciplinary areas of research emphasis are also designatedcancer research and treatment; the neurosciences; perinatal biology and medicine; and cardiovascular biology, medicine, and surgery. All faculty records are indexed by key words to enable rapid searches by area of interest. Moreover, the complete information in every integrated database may be searched and reported by use of free-text searches.
Biographical Information
The Biographical Information Record provides active push buttons linked to variable text fields up to seven pages (or 64,000 characters) in length (Figure 3). Fields include: Education/Training, Academic Appointments, Clinical Appointments, Honors/Awards, Editorial Boards, Active Grants, Professional Societies, Credentials/Patents, NIH Study Sections, Committee Memberships, Professional Activities, Teaching Activities, Administrative Appointments, and Publications.
Two additional text fields, Publication Archives and More Publications (Figure 4), are linked to the Publications buttons. This ensures that space is available for even the most prolific faculty members.
Working closely with the executive director of Administration and Faculty Affairs, we added additional screens and fields to enable that office to track administrative titles, background education, sabbaticals, tenure status, fellowship and resident information, and the employment contract process. Because each relational field is designed in a "many to one" configuration, statistical analysis can be performed. This enhancement of the system has reduced duplicative tracking of common data elements between the respective offices, although combining and updating data information files is a challenge that requires careful data management.
Research Profiles
The Research Profile Screen (Figure 5) lists six Research Key Words for each investigator and provides an active push button linked to the Summary of Research text field. Also included is a push button linked to the complete Key Words Dictionary (Figure 6), a summation of all key words designated by all faculty in the system.
Funding Opportunities and Announcements
An integrated relational database within the MedNetwork, the Funding Opportunities and Announcements field, functions as both a directory of research grants and a database of time-sensitive or new funding announcements. Fields include: Titles of Research, Dates of Posting, Agency Names, Agency Addresses, Agency Phone Numbers, Agency Contact Person, Application Due Dates, Information Phone Numbers, Types of Research, and Application Guidelines. This module allows quick look-ups and correlation of granting agency information with research key words and interests of the individual investigators. Grant information is now commonly available at minimal or no cost via direct Internet resources. The MedNetwork offers an expandable, relational database receptacle to download and store funding information from Internet sources such as NIH Grants & Contracts, Commerce Business Daily, and the Foundation Center. By cross-referencing research interests and key words, the MedNetwork is equipped to quickly match funding opportunities with respective investigators (see Figure 7).
Time-sensitive announcements (e.g., RFPs, RFAs) are entered into the system via Internet clients, streamed from existing resources, or cut-and-pasted from documents. Date of entry is automatically posted. Titles and full records of RFAs and RFPs are available via active push buttons. Once the RFAs and RFPs are in the system, automatic matching of RFPs and other funding opportunity bulletins with researcher interests is calculated so that systematic electronic transfer of full-text funding opportunity information is processed and distributed via e-mail. A Grants and Contracts officer in the Sponsored Programs Division performs a weekly systematic search of Internet funding sources; information is then distributed via the MedNetwork. This feature saves faculty and staff time for unilateral, duplicative searches of the Internet for the same information.
Sponsored Programs
The Sponsored Program function displays a listing of respective departmental active extramural grants and pending proposals. Listed are the principal investigator, co-investigator, agency sponsor, project title, start and end dates, amount of funds received to date in fiscal year, and the funding award for the entire project period. From this data, the user can perform searches and prepare reports for an entire department or an individual investigator within the department. This database module can provide automatic forecasting of expected income in future years. Additionally, we have provided a user-friendly calculating spreadsheet for completion of grant budget sheets. When completed, a report is generated that provides an acceptable facsimile of the NIH grant form and is suitable for filing with the agency.
From the chief administrator's advantage as highest level password holder, global reports are easily prepared by subject matter (e.g., "cancer"), by agency, by all departments for a specific time-frame with subtotals of each department, and by overall department totals.
Laboratory Profiles
The module illustrated in Figure 8 provides laboratory information on all principal investigators, lab locations, dimensions of labs in square feet, names of emergency contact person(s), emergency phone numbers, and alternate phone numbers. Graphic capabilities allow for floor plans to be stored in PICT formats. A "zoom" button brings floor plans, or other selected graphics, to full screen view for easy examination.
Regulatory Management
Complete protocol programs for Animal Care and Use (Figures 9 and 10) and the Institutional Review Board (Figure 11) permit investigators on-line access to respective protocol requirements. The MedNetwork system enables researchers to save previously approved protocols as well as update or modify previously submitted or approved protocols with new information, thereby creating new protocols. Administrative components allow for compliance reporting and protocol status tracking.
When multiple reports are required-such as lists of researchers with funded projects that include both animal and human subjects-the MedNetwork has proven to be a valuable resource. The system is used to automatically create letters to alert PIs about annual reviews, expiration, inactivation, continuation, and resubmission of studies for IRB and Animal Care and Use administrative offices. Other uses have included preparing standard mailing labels based on any criteria within the database (e.g., committee membership or departmental status).
An additional Animal Tracking Database (Figure 12) provides information concerning each principal investigator's protocols, singularly or combined. Report-generating capabilities include total use of animals. It permits the ordering of animals for only active, approved protocols and only for the quantity of animals authorized by the GUACUC committee. The program prints precise, detailed animal cage labels that provide special care instructions, emergency phone numbers, investigator/caretaker names as well as the species, strain, and class of animal. In the event that 80 percent or more of authorized animals have been ordered, the program generates an automatic memorandum to the investigator. The database provides lists of transaction by protocol, as well as listings of all inactive or expired protocols.
Graduate Biomedical Education
Complete faculty and student information related to departmental and interdepartmental programs at both master's and doctoral levels is stored within the integrated Graduate Medical Education databases. This information has proved particularly helpful in the preparation of training grant submissions, as well as program reviews. It has also been beneficial in the development of new interdisciplinary programs.
Research Dictionaries
The Research Dictionaries menu selection compiles research key words and the name of each faculty member in the system. Active links exist between the key word/faculty name and that faculty member's Basic/Biographical Information record. The active link is launched by double-clicking the line containing the key word and faculty name. Broad topic research interests and names of each faculty member in the system are also compiled when this Research Interest Dictionary option is chosen.
Comments File
This feature permits users to enter comments, suggestions, and revisions for any of the screens in the MedNetwork. The separate Comments File may be accessed via the Check Comments File in the Select Database Menu selection. By allowing users a method for providing their comments and revisions to the database information, this feature simultaneously assists in error-proofing the system without posing a risk to data integrity.
Internet Client Connections
A "hot" button launches Turbogopher, WAIS, Mosaic, Anarchie, and Netscape Internet clients. Full documentation is available for each client under an "About..." menu. When launched, the clients run simultaneously with the MedNetwork application. The system is a very cost-efficient way to store, sort, and publish customized text to the Internet. Since no "hard coding" exists between these Internet clients, the MedNetwork allows easy, instantaneous upgradability to new or updated versions of the Internet clients. New versions are simply "dragged" into the accompanying desktop folders, and the MedNetwork launches the folder's latest contents.
System Support: Standards and Requirements
The file server for the prototype database was a Macintosh (Fx), but a 486 PC would have served as well since the PC and Mac versions of the system both share the same network and access the same data files. The MedNetwork operates over networks that adopt standard byte-range locking techniques to prevent multiple access to specific parts of the data files. Presently, we use an Apple Group Server and a Novell server to broadcast throughout the campus wide area network.
Presently, the system is deployed on a 486 PC server attached to the Research Novell network. Initially, a user requests a log-in to the server, and all updated versions of the software are automatically available when the user attaches to the network. Approximately 70 users access the network at a given time. The upper limit is 456 concurrent users. A strength of the system is that it is cost-effective to administer because it does not require large file servers or complicated systems administration.
Initially, the faculty provided diskette copies of their curriculum vitae, and this information was pasted into the Basic Information module via cut-and-paste techniques. All versions of faculty CVs (e.g., DOS WordPerfect, Microsoft Word) were accepted and subsequently translated into Microsoft Word files. When hard copies of faculty CVs were the sole source of information, text was scanned using a flatbed scanner and optical character recognition software.
Since integrity of the database hinges on the accuracy of its information, we strongly emphasized that only one or two staff members would have editing capability once the system was implemented. With the Office of the Academic Dean, ODRGE verifies accuracy of data and ensures that privacy constraints are met. Since various report-generating capabilities were designed to assist both offices in their respective missions, the MedNetwork replaced the older dBase faculty information system previously used by the Academic dean. Sharing of database resources has eliminated duplicative data entry and maintenance. Confidentiality of information is assured by multilayered password protection. The Georgetown MedNetwork provides 12 layers of password protection. On the Master, or highest level of password access, all files, modules, and fields are visible and can be edited. On lower password levels, access is provided only to specific portions of the system. On the lowest, or public password level, all confidential information (e.g., social security numbers of faculty, animal research use by investigators, home addresses, and the like) is invisible to the user.
Presently, the MedNetwork system is available publicly in the Dahlgren Medical Library, the Lombardi Cancer Research Center, the Office of Medical Development, and the Office of Finance and Operations, naming just a few of the diverse departments that share this resource, in addition to the Research Resource Room of the ODRGE. Any user who has connections to GU's high-speed network (GUNET) can access the networked version of the MedNetwork. Stand-alone versions are also available upon request for Powerbook or PC Notebook installation.
A modified version of the MedNetwork was the basis for a component of the 1992 Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) research database initiative at the Lombardi Cancer Center at GUMC. The MedNetwork faculty information module and development tools were modified to create a multiplatform front-end database populated with investigators' research information for use at other Breast SPORES and by the program director at the National Cancer Institute. Other Breast SPORE relational databases that rapidly followed included cell line, tumor registry, and patient information modules.
System Development
Following a thorough examination of available database engine tools, the ODRGE selected Blyth Software's Omnis 7, a cross-platform application environment, written in C++, which can be operated over a network or in stand-alone mode. The cost of development kits for Macintosh and Windows clients was $6,000.
Omnis 7 enabled the design team to construct flexible, scalable databases for researchers in self-contained programs represented by a single icon on the desktop. Individual faculty and staff members without a physical ethernet connection to the Georgetown University Wide Area Network (GUNET) were provided with standalone versions of the system, with updated records available on a routine delivery schedule. Those users connected to a local area network were able to access the databases using the network versions. Compatible network protocols include Novell, Appleshare, and Ethertalk.
MedNetwork file formats and application screens are suitably efficient to allow the entire program and complete data files to reside on less than 30 megabytes of hard disk space. This efficiency of storage management means that faculty and staff can download the entire program onto laptop computers, or, in compressed form, onto floppy disks. The program is also easily transferred to CD-ROM for dynamic distribution and file storage.
The generic import/export features of the system allow data to be imported from existing database management software currently in use at the Medical Center, such as dBase and Paradox. The MedNetwork accommodates import/export to all other programs which support one of the eight standard file formats: Dif, Sylk, dBase, Lotus WKS, delimited (commas), delimited (tabs), one field per line, and SQL (structured query language). Legacy data was easily "streamed in," which assured accuracy of transfer without laborious manual re-entry.
After one year of development and beta-testing, the Georgetown MedNetwork's multilayered database went on-line with 1,050 full-time faculty biographical profiles. Part-time and adjunct faculty information has since been added to this system. Today profiles for more than 3,000 faculty and professional staff are available.
The option also exists to use the system's screens and fields as a "front-end" to larger databases. Specifically, the system is equipped with client-server SQL "connects" supporting EDA/SQL, Oracle and Oracle2, SQLServer, DAL, and RDB connectivity.
Future Plans
A MedNetwork Advisory Group has been established to help expand and enhance the use of the system. Members of this advisory panel include the executive director of Administration and Faculty Affairs, the associate dean for Research Services, the chair of the Department of Biochemistry, the associate director for Planning and Communications, the Medical Center librarian, and other senior representatives from the GUMC faculty. Expanded and new capabilities of the MedNetwork are planned, including a module for the Office of Technology Transfer for the tracking of patent expenses, royalty distribution, and the like. Another improvement will be to link MedNetwork user-defined search and retrieval functions to the ODRGE World Wide Web home page (http://macpost.odr.georgetown.edu). This access to MedNetwork via the World Wide Web will allow internal use of the Web and permit other institutions to connect and browse non-confidential faculty profiles, biomedical graduate school information, and GUMC-maintained funding opportunity databases. A modified MedNetwork system, named the Faculty Information Network (FIN), is now in use at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, and collaborative efforts to identify ways to improve both systems are underway. The Georgetown system has also been modified to meet the administrative needs of the Jesuit Conference in Washington, DC. Other institutions interested in using MedNetwork are invited to contact the authors.
Summary
Georgetown MedNetwork has proved to be a valuable resource in the administration and summation of activities related to research and graduate biomedical education at Georgetown University Medical Center. Planned expansion of the system will provide the research community with a centralized information resource that will serve to foster scientific interactions throughout the university and beyond.
Stephen P. Moore, David M. Zapple, Stephen M. Smith, and Alan I. Faden, MD
The authors are all associated with the Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Education at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, DC.
Address correspondence to: Alan I. Faden, MD, Georgetown University Medical Center, 3900 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20007. Phone: (202) 687-7007; Fax: (202) 687-2585. E-Mail: [email protected].
Copyright Society of Research Administrators Summer 1995