US university deploys Data Junction software

Data Junction Corporation, developer of the world's most widely deployed integration solutions, today announced that Emory University's Winship Cancer Institute (WCI) is using Data Junction software as part of a new information system designed to help predict and tailor cancer treatments for patients. The research will improve customer care by accelerating the diagnostic process allowing physicians to provide faster, more accurate treatment care.

At its core, WCI's research involves gathering genetic fingerprints (data representations of patient DNA) and comparing them with clinical trial data. Tissue samples are processed through hybridisation by extracting DNA for the creation of a gene chip. The GenesysSI (Seamless Informatics) system, which analyses gene expressions and combinations through the world's fastest commercial supercomputer, references consenting patients' genetic fingerprints against genetic profiles found in public and private databases throughout the medical community.

By integrating new genetic data with current and future clinical data, physicians can identify patterns to predict patients' responses to different medications and dosages allowing them to treat cancer more effectively. These vital processes help target patients for future, more productive clinical trials, aiding in the eventual development of new genomic-based drugs. Armed with a new attack on cancer, physicians can prescribe treatments for new patients that have already proven successful on others with similar genetic make-ups.

To make such breakthroughs possible, WCI constructed a central Clinical Data Warehouse comprised of data from several internal and external databases including, among others, PowerChart, Cancer Registry, Pharmacy and MicroArray. In order to populate their warehouse, WCI uses Data Junction to continually extract, transform and load various clinical and genetic data (including operational clinic data, cancer-based system data, risk factor data and medical record data). This enables GenesysSI to analyse the data within the Clinical Data Warehouse and allows doctors to review the results and prescribe treatment recommendations.

"The vast amount of data from the large number of sources involved in this project is tremendous. Data Junction allows us to control and manipulate all of the data so that the system can function efficiently. It is the core of our data extraction, transformation and loading process. Data Junction helps us not only manage the data, but we can also capture important knowledge about the data, known as metadata, which states how it is used, the business rules involved, field names and other similar information. We plan to leverage Data Junction to further enhance our metadata repository," states Leroy Hill, director of Oncology Informatics at the Winship Cancer Institute.