A Content Management System for Medical Image Analysis Research
The Mayo Clinic is a non-profit medical practice and medical research group based in Minnesota and is the largest non-profit medical group practice in the world. For 4 years running, the Mayo Clinic is top-ranked for quality and safety more often than any other health care organization.
The Mayo Cancer Research Clinic produces an exceptionally large collection of data that needs to be shared across various departments and locations. One typical clinical study for example, can involve thousands of participants, with imaging data acquired across multiple institutions. Investigating and accessing those images along with associated data is critical to medical research. Data management along with having a highly configurable workflow is crucial for clinical studies in the era of Precision Medicine
In 2015, the Mayo Clinic created a content management system called MIRMAID, using the TACTIC open source platform as a major component to fulfill the following critical requirements:
- The ability to store imaging data of thousands of clinical trial participants
- Sophisticated security that would meet regulatory compliance requirements for systems that manage clinical image trials, including protecting patient privacy.
- A single interface that can store, manage, and access imaging-based studies
- Track imaging data acquired over several time points across multiple institutions
- Highly configurable and graphical workflows
- Manage imaging-based studies, with sophisticated security
- Powerful project management that can handle the requirement for data auditing
The Mayo Clinic also wanted to leverage an open source solution to maintain flexibility and not be tied to vendor-specific or legacy technology, while keeping operational costs low. Since TACTIC open source includes a workflow engine, project management system, digital asset management (DAM) capabilities, and API integrations it was a clear match. Mayo will always have complete access to all code and customizations which keeps inline with the ongoing flexibility required in the medical research space.
It was noted in Mayo’s scientific paper that other systems could not provide such requirements and “are not well-suited for research workflows because it is difficult to incorporate third-party applications that facilitate data input and output as well as analysis. Although data are accessible, they are not easily manipulated and analyzed on a large scale. They also support only a simple linear workflow.”
The TACTIC based system is able to “manage imaging-based studies, with sophisticated security, graphical and flexible workflows, and powerful project management. This provides a complete system for medical imaging research management not otherwise available.”
To learn more about how the Mayo Clinic orchestrates complex data, download the Medical Research Paper here.
