The Division of Biomedical Informatics offers the following resources to investigators at Cincinnati Children's Research Foundation and the University of Cincinnati:
- Software
Our software inventory includes commercially licensed software as well as a large number of open-source packages that are available on our cluster and various workstations. - Collaboration tools
Several options are available including a wiki, web-based calendar, equipment booking system, mailing lists and Microsoft® SharePoint®. - Research data warehouse (opens in new window)
We are using a framework called i2b2 to develop a repository of patient information from multiple sources. - Computational cluster
Our Linux cluster is available for batch processing. - Data storage
Options include institutionally supported personal and divisional shared storage (with 10 GB and 100GB default quotas, respectively), web-based storage for specific research data types (e.g, microarray, genotype, flow cytometry), and other specialized storage. - Database servers
Servers are available for hosting MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server®, Oracle® and FileMaker® databases. - Web servers
Configurations include Apache/Tomcat, IIS, SharePoint and Drupal.
Other resources
- Direct link between the Cincinnati Children's and UC networks
As of Friday, June 12, 2009, a direct link between the Cincinnati Children's and University of Cincinnati networks is in place. The result of months of planning and cooperation between the Department of Information Services at Cincinnati Children's and UCIT, this gigabit fiber channel link enables users to connect to resources at both institutions directly rather than over the Internet. The benefits of this improved connectivity include faster upload and download speeds along with fewer interruptions. Among other major initiatives, the direct link will support the Clinical & Translational Science Award (CTSA), recently granted to UC and Cincinnati Children's. - Virtual servers
An alternative option for those considering purchasing a server, two virtual server clusters are available for both network tiers (internal and DMZ). Get more information. - Wireless access for visiting researchers
The Department of Information Services offers this service to visiting faculty, students and other researchers. Get more information. - Linux and Windows desktops
Although routine desktop support is generally provided by the Cincinnati Children's Department of Information Services or UCit, BMI does help with specialized desktop needs, in particular, those of Linux users. A number of investigators use Linux desktop computers that are integrated with the resources described on this page (e.g., in terms of LDAP authentication, home directories, NFS mounts etc.). We also maintain a number of Windows desktop PCs in common areas on the 10th floor of the S building. These desktops are primarily for use by the many rotating graduate students, and they are interoperable with the Linux environment: they authenticate against the same LDAP server as the Linux computers and use the same disk space.