Verne S. Caviness

General Clinical Research Center

The School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and UNC Hospitals




Informatics Core



The GCRC has established a state-of-the-art, integrated computer system to support
its investigative and administrative users.  The system is centered upon a pair of 
Sun workstations running the UNIX operating system.  A local area network (referred
to as GCRCnet)  connects approximatley 30 local PCs and 1 Mac to the Sun's, enabling
them to share the Sun's 3G bytes of disk space and networked laser printers, to send
and receive electronic mail, to electronically transfer files, and to run a number of
UNIX programs including SAS for statistical analysis and INGRES for large database 
management.  GCRCnet is bridged to the School of Medicine--Office of Information Systems'
(OIS) network, thence to the campus network, and, finally, to the world-wide network of
educational, governmental, and commercial organizations -- INTERNET.



Of additional interest to investigators are the connections to the Hospital's mainframe
and the Hospial Labs' computer, allowing convenient patient data search and retrieval.
Access is also provided to OIS's huge INGRES database, archiving millions of laboratory
test results and patient demographic information for research purposes, and the UNCLE medical
reference database (Medline -- cooperativley maintained with the Health Sciences Library).



This extreme level of connectivity means that investigators can quickly communicate with 
others, can share data, and can login to the GCRC computers (or other computers if they 
have local permission) to run programs -- all literally from or to anywhere in the world!
And it is all free, courtesy of the National Institutes of Health's Division of Research 
Resources and the UNC-CH computing community!!



a.	Informatics Space



The CDMAS is a distributed system.  The local PC's and Mac are located throughout the GCRC 
in users' offices.  The main Sun workstation is a SPARC 5, with 64mb of RAM, located in the
Systems Manager's office while the second is a SPARC 1, located in an adjoining, multi-user
office available for investigator usage should they need its large screen color graphics 
capability.  Otherwise, users can login to either workstation directly from their offices, 
homes, etc. through their local network connections or via a bank of dial-in modems maintained
by OIS and by the university's Office of Information Technology.  The CDMAS provides for:  
FTP, Anonymous FTP, KERMIT, World-Wide-Web (WWW) server, List Server,  UNIX applications, 
and DOS applications and file management services.  PCs and several vt240 terminals are located
throughout the GCRC for general access.  There are two networked laser printers located,
for convenience, on opposite sides of the GCRC.  The Sun's can also print via any print 
server on the INTERNET.



b.	Informatics Software



The GCRC offers its investigators a suite of integrated software programs which are 
technically supported by the Systems Manager.  Ongoing program selections and upgrades
are based on the goal of providing support in each of the major need categories of data 
management, data analysis and modeling, data conversion, word processing, graphics and 
presentation preparation, communication, and personnel and resource scheduling.  The PC's 
run Microsoft Windows and the Sun's run SOLARIS 2.5 and MIT's X11R5, both for their 
intuitive, easy-to-use, graphical, point-and-click interface.



Programs currently available to GCRC investigators and administrative staff include: 
INGRES, Epi-Info (an easy to use, PC-based, free, package developed by the Centers for 
Disease Control), Microsoft Excel, and dBASE IV for data management; SAS, Prophet 
(available but not currently installed), Nutritionist III, and the Health Habits and 
History Questionnaire for data analysis; the inherent capabilities of the other programs 
plus dbms/copy for data conversion; Microsoft Word for word processing; Lotus FreeLance 
and Cricket Graph for presentation; PC-NFS telnet and ftp and Eudora electronic mail for 
communication; and Clockwise for personnel and resource scheduling.  The Systems Manager 
can provide investigators access to some of these programs, provide local copies of public 
domain software, or help located the best prices for investigator acquisition.



c.	Informatics Personnel



Mr. Clarence Potter is the Computer Systems Manager and is commited to the service-oriented, 
ongoing education model of computer support which he has established at the GCRC.  Mr. Potter 
has a Master's degree and over 10 years of professional experience in all facets of computer 
technology, programming, and systems engineering.



One of his major responsibilities as Systems Manager is the education of investigators, trainees, 
and staff in the proper methodology of data managment and in the use of the CDMAS resources.  
Investigator CDMAS knowledge and capability are viewed as evolving through three stages.  The 
Systems Manager's role is both nurturer and facilitator of investigator growth along these stages, 
which can be described as follows:



1.	New investigators to the GCRC, or those with protocols sufficiently different from any 
	existing ones, generally have the most need of the CDMAS resources.  Assistance is offered
	in terms of protocol design, consultation, training, computer access, database design, and
	programming.  Unless careful, it is easy for the Systems Manager to become over-extended 
	with such investigators; yet they are the ones who need him the most.  It is therefore a 
	rather delicate balancing act.



2.	More experienced investigators with more funding generally have the beginnings of their 
	own capability.  They have computers, generally PC's, and software, but still desire access 
	to the more powerful GCRC resources.  This is especially true for the INGRES databases and 
	connectivity to the other UNC-CH computing resources.  These investigators often have 
	data-entry personnel, and perhaps programmers or analysts as well.  The GCRC Systems 
	Manager provides access to the GCRC resources, consultation, and some amount of technical 
	review.



3.	Very experienced and well funded investigators generally have their own CDMAS capabilities 
	built into a center grant or into pieces of multiple protocols.  These investigators may 
	desire access to the GCRC computers, again especially the INGRES databases and connectivity, 
	and they occasionally have questions.  In general, however, they are essentially self-sufficient.



Mr. Potter works closely with the Biostatistician and the Epidemiologist to ensure that the technology
is in place to service the science that they desire.  We may also work together to help an investigator 
find data entry and analysis personnel for performing the detailed work with our assistance and supervision.  
He is also very interested in finding new methods of capturing and processing data.



Finally, the Systems Manager acts as a point-of-first-contact for all technical problems encountered by
investigators and administrators.  If Mr. Potter can't solve the problem himself, he directs the problem
to those who can


last updated: 4/07/04 1:14 PM