Beyond a Disease Registry: An Integrated Virtual Environment for Adrenal Cancer Research

Abstract

Many biomedical research collaborations are focused on the establishment of web-based databases that capture phenotypic and in some cases genotypic information, targeted to specific diseases so called disease registries. Such resources are often used for clinical matchmaking and allow information on patients and patient disorders to be shared by clinicians with wider biomedical research communities outside of a given hospital setting, and potentially with patients and/or patient advisory groups. Whilst addressing aspects of clinical collaborations through making targeted biomedical data accessible -such registries are really only a starting point for what can be achieved to support research collaborations. In particular, registries should ideally be augmented with a portfolio of additional service offerings that facilitate secure research collaborations: bio-banking and bio-sample data tracking capabilities; support for feasibility analysis on clinical trials and studies; offer seamless data transfer to/from clinical trials; provide search and analytical capabilities in a user-driven research environment. Such a feature rich, Internet-based virtual research environment (VRE) has been established as part of the European Union funded ENS@T-CANCER 1 project that has a particular focus on supporting research into four primary types of adrenal tumors . This paper provides an overview of the ENS@T-CANCER VRE, outlining its core capabilities and how it has galvanized previously and largely fragmented, country-specific database and registry efforts. To illustrate the utility of the ENS@T-CANCER VRE for clinical trials we focus on the full 4-phase, international, multi-centre Prospective Monoamine Tumor (PMT) clinical trial and its utilisation of capabilities provided by the VRE.

Smart Classroom College English Listening Teaching System Based on Virtual Environment Technology

“…Frame theory is a practical theory, which can be widely used in various daily English teaching activities. Therefore, in English listening class, it is necessary for teachers to explain and supplement some linguistic theoretical knowledge to students, and should explain the basic theoretical knowledge of framework to students (Parmar, et al, 2016) (Sinnott, et al, 2016). Because the recording materials in English listening class are basically about one or several topics, it is very important for teachers to introduce the theory in class.…”

Analysing Open Data in Virtual Research Environments

“…However, existing VRE projects are restricted to particular domains (Jeffery et al, 2017). For instance, the ESLab VRE is focused on ecosystem services (Holmberg et al, 2015), the ENS@T-CANCER VRE is focused on adrenal cancer research (Sinnott et al, 2016) and the ENROLLER VRE is focused on the humanities (Sarwar et al, 2013).…”

Science Gateway Workshops 2015 Special Issue Conference Publications

“…In "Beyond a Disease Registry: An Integrated Virtual Environment for Adrenal Cancer Research" [2] the authors describe the proliferation of web-based databases that provide phenotypic and genotypic information -disease registries. They describe extensions to this work that could include bio-banking, bio-sample data tracking, support for analysis of clinical trials, data transfer to and from these trials and search and analytical capabilities.…”