Population Studies Facility
- Eric Ross, PhD
Eric Ross, PhD
- Eric Ross, PhD
- Reimann R383
- Pricing &
- Contact Eric Ross for pricing and scheduling.
The Population Studies Facility (PSF) supports research conducted by peer-reviewed, funded Fox Chase investigators by providing access to a team of skilled information systems professionals. The PSF provides informatics support services to FCCC investigators conducting studies from a wide spectrum of disciplines (e.g., behavioral medicine, chemoprevention, oncology, epidemiology, genetics, outcomes research, radiation oncology, immunology, translational research, and virology). PSF personnel have substantial expertise with state-of-the-art software engineering and design. Functions include development of:
- Databases for the storage and manipulation of large quantities of questionnaire, clinical, specimen and laboratory data
- Electronic data entry, data capture and retrieval systems
- Report generation software
- Quality control systems
- Systems that provide integration and controlled exchange of data from diverse sources
The PSF also develops and maintains information systems that support many Fox Chase Cancer Center research facilities.
PSF software engineers have access to a variety of development tools, both commercial (e.g., Sybase's PowerDesigner, Business Objects Data Services and Business Objects Enterprise) and open source (e.g., Eclipse, Maven, Hibernate, Spring Framework, Alfresco, Apache Tomcat, etc.). The majority of the database management systems developed by the PSF use the relational database product Oracle as the primary software platform for data entry and validation, storage, retrieval, modification, and security. The principal Oracle database (version 10g) runs on an Oracle SPARC Enterprise M4000 server running Solaris 10 and is connected to a Storage Area Network (SAN). Web and application services are deployed across several servers running Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems. Windows and Linux servers run in a VMWare ESX clustered environment. The SAP Business Objects production environment runs on a load-balanced cluster of servers and access a Sun T5141 Oracle 10g database server. The Business Objects Data Services (ETL) are deployed on a Sun T5140. These servers reside in secure data centers with redundant cooling and UPS power with generator backup. Currently, the majority of the database management systems developed by the PSF use the relational database product Oracle as the primary software platform for data entry and validation, storage, retrieval, modification, and security. The software developed and supported by the PSF run on a distributed computing system consisting of multiple RISC computers running the Solaris operating systems.