Arciteca developing clinical data management system

Australian data management vendor Arciteca and the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Mental Health are developing a new system designed specifically for clinical trials and other medical research.

Arciteca is using real volunteer data from the CRC for Mental Health to develop a product aimed at allowing clinicians to capture clinical data at the bedside and access the information when needed.

The project is being funded by Arciteca and Victoria’s Department of State Development, Business and Innovation.

Arciteca said the system will be designed to allow multiple research institutions to collaborate on a trial, with each researcher feeding data into a central repository. It will be open enough to allow users to develop additional functions when they need it.

CRC for Mental Health Bioinformatician Dr Noel Faux said the sheer volume of data generated by clinical research can be difficult to manage.

Several of the CRC’s projects aim to identify the biomarkers that provide an early indication of the onset of mental illnesses including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s and schizophrenia. The volumes of data generated by these studies can run into the hundreds of terabytes, and the information is often spread across multiple suborganisations.

“This project is important because it means we can capture all sorts of data across multiple sites, covering multiple conditions; enhancing the results and the management of the patient’s condition,” Faux said.

Image courtesy of SLU Madrid Campus under CC