caBIG™ Tools
One of the most challenging issues for researchers and biorepositories has been the absence of information technology tools and infrastructure to facilitate the appropriate collection, processing, archiving, and dissemination of biospecimens to the research community, not only within an individual medical institution but also in a network across multiple institutions.
As part of its caBIG(tm) initiative, through the Tissue Banks and Pathology Tools Workspace, the NCI is supporting the development of such informatics tools, including the caTissue suite of applications:
- caTissue core will address all aspects of donor enrollment and informed consent, collection and tracking of samples.
- caTissue CAE will address annotation of biospecimens with molecular and clinical data.
- caTIES will allow extraction of structured data from free text pathology reports.
- caBIG(tm) tools are designed with security considerations to support patient privacy and data access restrictions, including those aspects covered by the Common Rule and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). Visit http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/hipaa/ or http://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/ to learn more about HIPAA. Information about the Common Rule (45 CFR 46) may be found at: http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.htm
