Journal:From months to minutes: Creating Hyperion, a novel data management system expediting data insights for oncology research and patient care
| Full article title | From months to minutes: Creating Hyperion, a novel data management system expediting data insights for oncology research and patient care |
|---|---|
| Journal | PLOS Digital Health |
| Author(s) | Snyder, Eric; Rivers, Thomas; Smith, Lisa; Paoni, Scott; Cunliffe, Scott; Patel, Arpan; Ramsdale, Erika |
| Author affiliation(s) | James P. Wilmot Cancer Institute |
| Primary contact | Erika underscore ramsdale at urmc dot rochester dot edu |
| Editors | Shah, Rutwik |
| Year published | 2022 |
| Volume and issue | 1(11) |
| Article # | e0000036 |
| DOI | 10.1371/journal.pdig.0000036 |
| ISSN | 2767-3170 |
| Distribution license | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International |
| Website | https://journals.plos.org/digitalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pdig.0000036 |
| Download | https://journals.plos.org/digitalhealth/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pdig.0000036&type=printable (PDF) |
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Abstract
Ensuring timely access to accurate data is critical for the functioning of a cancer center. Despite overlapping data needs, data are often fragmented and sequestered across multiple systems (such as the electronic health record [EHR], state and federal registries, and research databases), creating high barriers to data access for clinicians, researchers, administrators, quality officers, and patients. The creation of integrated data systems also faces technical, leadership, cost, and human resource barriers, among others. The University of Rochester's James P. Wilmot Cancer Institute (WCI) hired a small team of individuals with both technical and clinical expertise to develop a custom data management software platform—Hyperion— addressing five challenges: lowering the skill level required to maintain the system, reducing costs, allowing users to access data autonomously, optimizing data security and utilization, and shifting technological team structure to encourage rapid innovation.
The Hyperion data management platform was designed to meet these challenges in addition to usual considerations of data quality, security, access, stability, and scalability. Implemented between May 2019 and December 2020 at the WCI, Hyperion includes a sophisticated custom validation and interface engine to process data from multiple sources, storing it in a database. Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and custom wizards permit users to directly interact with data across operational, clinical, research, and administrative contexts. The use of multi-threaded processing, open-source programming languages, and automated system tasks (normally requiring technical expertise) minimizes costs. An integrated ticketing system and active stakeholder committee support data governance and project management. A co-directed, cross-functional team with flattened hierarchy and integration of industry software management practices enhances problem solving and responsiveness to user needs. Access to validated, organized, and current data is critical to the functioning of multiple domains in medicine. Although there are downsides to developing in-house customized software, we describe a successful implementation of custom data management software in an academic cancer center.
Keywords: data management, data security, data visualization, data analysis, data integration, cancer
Background and significance
Supporting information
- S1 Text (.docx): Fig A. Nursing dashboard. Fig B.' Example of Provider Dashboard landing page, with interactive features (hover-over pop-up text and ability to click on bar graphs to “drill down” on data). Fig C. Clinical Trial dashboard main page, with interactive features.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the continued support of the Wilmot Cancer Institute’s leadership in encouraging innovation, as well as the support of the physicians, nurses, and staff.
Funding
ER is supported by the National Cancer Institute (K08CA248721) and the National Institute on Aging (R03AG067977). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Data availability
All data are in the manuscript and/or supporting information files.
Competing interests
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
References
Notes
This presentation is faithful to the original, with only a few minor changes to presentation, grammar, and spelling. In some cases important information was missing from the references, and that information was added. The original includes both an abstract and an author summary, which is confusing since the purpose of the asbtract is to act as a summary of the text; for this version, the two were combined to form an intelligible, coherent abstract.
