FIMED: Flexible management of biomedical data

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Informatics
• Clinical Research Data Management

Background:

• Clinical trial management systems (CTMS) are crucial for data management but often have design limitations.
• Existing CTMS struggle with the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of clinical research data, hindering adaptation to evolving trial practices.
• Proprietary CTMS solutions typically address specific tasks, lacking flexibility for diverse research needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce FIMED, a software solution designed for flexible management of clinical data from multiple trials.
• To support the advancement of personalized medicine by improving the quality and ease of clinical trial data management for researchers.
• To address the limitations of existing CTMS in handling dynamic and heterogeneous clinical research data.

Main Methods:

• FIMED enables dynamic and incremental design of patient profiles within clinical trials.
• It provides a flexible user interface that simplifies complex database interactions for clinical researchers.
• Users can define personalized data schemas tailored to specific study needs and specifications.

Main Results:

• The software's efficiency was validated through a real-world, anonymized use case in Melanoma clinical assays.
• FIMED incorporates three data analysis and visualization components for clinical exploration of gene expression data: heatmap, cluster heatmap, and gene regulatory network inference.
• A publicly accessible web instance of FIMED is available for demonstration.

Conclusions:

• FIMED provides a flexible and user-friendly approach to managing multidimensional clinical research data.
• The system's adaptability makes it suitable for various diseases involving clinical data and assays.
• FIMED facilitates improved data management and analysis, contributing to advancements in personalized medicine and clinical research.