SERPent ProjectSecure Epidemiology Research Platform

January – October 2010

Virtual Research Environment

Rapid Innovation Project

Funded

Who are JISC

• Joint Information Systems Committee• Funded by UK HE and FE funding bodies to

provide leadership in ICT in support – Education– research

Virtual Research Environment Programme

Definition– Help researchers from all disciplines to work collaboratively by managing

the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research.

Tools and technologies– Do research– Interact with other researchers– Make better use of local and national resources

Programme aim– Define and assist with the development of frameworks and standards and

encourage their use

The SERPent bid – Data Sharing

Extract from Sharing public health data: a code of conduct, Bamako 2008:

– Support the development of “open source” software for management, documentation and analysis of public health data.

– Commit to a single metadata standard for datasets of public health interest. Probably an extension of the existing DDI standard, this should be widely adopted after piloting.

The SERPent bid

AimExamine the use of existing tools and standards to develop effective metadata catalogues of existing epidemiological surveys.

ToolsData Documentation Initiative (DDI)Nesstar PublisherInternational Household Survey Network Microdata Management Toolkit

CollaborationMetadata Technologies (Pascal Heus)UK Data ArchiveMRC DSS

The SERPent bid - Timeline

Project Plan & Timetable– Project Initiation & Use case selection and scoping [15 days] – Requirements analysis [10 days]– Data Manager Training [20 days].– Agile Model Development [60 days]– Metadata Quality Assurance [20 days]– Feature driven software development [100 days]– Stakeholder evaluation [30 days]– Dissemination [35 days]

The SERPent Project - Deliverables

• A common framework for metadata management across the UCL Faculty of Biomedical Sciences

• A secure enclave metadata catalogue service for deployment as a central reference service

• Integration of DDI based toolkit for the documentation of studies

• Provision of DDI documentation for selected use cases

• Training materials and guidelines to promote wider implementation of the metadata catalogue

• Dissemination of the lessons learned throughout the epidemiology, public health and population science community.

• Promotion of transparent information governance arrangements to inform all stakeholders

• An effective network of database managers working in epidemiology and public health research at the UCL Faculty of Biomedical Sciences

Demo

• Catalogue Service• DDI Tools