The imperative for change
With millions of people affected by disease every day, researchers needed a shared platform that could make conducting research studies and clinical trials faster, simpler and more collaborative.
However, increasingly constrained agency budgets required a system that’s scalable, disease-agnostic and flexible enough to be customized to meet the need of any research community. And because of the sensitivity of human subject data, the platform needed to securely and reliably collect, categorize and transfer applicable biomedical datasets. As the process of designing a system began, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) faced hosting, development, data integration and technical challenges.
The transformative solution
A true collaboration between government agencies, BRICS was developed as a joint effort between the NIH Center for Information Technology (CIT), NIH National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC) within the Department of Defense (DoD).
BRICS was established with an eye toward reusability with customizable, plug-n-play integrated software modules that could reflect an individual disease category or specific research organization. The modules include Data Dictionary, Data Repository, Meta Study, ProFoRMS, Query and Export Data, MIPAV Imaging Data Submission and Account Management. Organizations and other users can select as many or as few of the integrated modules for their study needs.