• Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, one of the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States, is using Oracle(r) Healthcare Transaction Base (HTB) and Oracle Fusion Middleware components as the foundation for its new translational research infrastructure.
• The new infrastructure is designed to maximize the value of clinical and research data, and help improve disease understanding and patient care.
• Dana-Farber, through its research, collects large amounts of patient and clinical data, as well as thousands of biological samples. It also relies on outside data sources to advance its research and understanding of complex diseases.
• To design new studies and address complex questions, Dana-Farber researchers need to aggregate clinical, sample and genomic data from within and beyond the organization's collections.
• Dana-Farber, like many research organizations, lacked a single, integrated data infrastructure that enables aggregation and provides a comprehensive view.
• Using Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base, Dana-Farber created an integrated data repository that enables researchers to access clinical and sample data using a single platform and seamlessly connect it with experimental data.
• The new data infrastructure helps researchers investigate clinical data more thoroughly, make complex queries and more complete data analysis, and improve experiment design. It also enables more rapid queries, providing researchers with answers in minutes to queries that previously required days to process.
• To help ensure compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requirements, Oracle infrastructure software enables Dana-Farber to match clinical data and samples from specific patients and then remove identifying information from the data before presenting it to a researcher.
• Dana-Farber deployed Oracle Identity Management and Oracle Access Manager, components of the Oracle Fusion Middleware suite, to enable researchers to securely access data from any location.
• Oracle BPEL Process Manager enables Dana-Farber to manage complex clinical data transfers securely as well as replicate processes that require multiple deployments across the infrastructure.
• Dana-Farber uses Oracle Fusion Middleware to build and manage web services that facilitate integration with third-party applications, including those from Oracle Partner InforSense, for advanced analytics and data mining across the various data sets.
• Dana-Farber worked with Oracle Consulting to identify requirements, design and, ultimately, deploy the solution using off-the-shelf products - going live within five months after completion of the solution design.

Supporting Quotes

• "Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base enabled us to securely integrate our clinical, sample and genomic data - helping us to maximize the use of this information in our quest to develop a better understanding of and treatments for serious diseases," said John Quackenbush, Ph.D., Professor of Biostatics and Computational Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. "We leveraged Oracle's extensive offerings to create a solution that helps our researchers work more securely and with greater insight. And because we leveraged Oracle's existing technology, we have a system that we could rapidly implement, that is scalable and extensible, and one that can serve as a framework for other organizations facing similar challenges."

 

• "Health sciences organizations require advanced data integration capabilities, combined with analytical power and process flexibility, to effectively support emerging translational medicine initiatives," said Neil de Crescenzo, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Oracle Health Sciences Global Business Unit. "Oracle solutions, such as Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base, facilitate powerful enterprise-wide data integration that helps organizations enable the critical flow of information from the bedside to the bench, and vice versa."

Supporting Resources

Oracle in Health Sciences
Oracle Healthcare Transaction Base
Oracle Identity Management
Oracle Access Manager
Oracle BPEL Process Manager

InforSense (Oracle Partner) Case Study
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dr. Quackenbush's Laboratory

About Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute provides expert, compassionate care to children and adults with cancer, while advancing the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. Founded in 1947, it is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, which is designated as a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. It also provides training for new generations of physicians and scientists; designs programs that promote public health; and disseminates innovative patient therapies and scientific discoveries to its target community across the United States and throughout the world.

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at http://www.oracle.com.

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