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Wiki-based Data Management to Support Systems Toxicology*
Citation:
Rountree, N., A. Radadia, C. Williams-DeVane, B. Van Etten, J. Zhang, T. Hughes, BJ George, D. Doerfler, M. Khan, A. Vega, D. Lyons, L. Burgoon, AND S. Edwards. Wiki-based Data Management to Support Systems Toxicology*. Presented at Society of Toxicology CCT Meeting: Building for Better Decisions: Multi-Scale Integration of Human Health and Environmental Data, May 08 - 11, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
As the field of toxicology relies more heavily on systems approaches for mode of action discovery, evaluation, and modeling, the need for integrated data management is greater than ever. To meet these needs, we developed a flexible data management system that assists scientists with experimental planning and design as well as storing and publishing data derived from toxicological experiments.
Description:
As the field of toxicology relies more heavily on systems approaches for mode of action discovery, evaluation, and modeling, the need for integrated data management is greater than ever. To meet these needs, we developed a flexible data management system that assists scientists with experimental planning and design as well as storing and publishing data derived from toxicological experiments. This system is designed with collaborative experiments in mind and provides an easy way to share data and track changes. The EPA WikiLIMSTM system was constructed on the MediaWiki platform to store experimental metadata inside the Wiki and to link to raw data in the underlying file system. All aspects of the system design are integrated to bring scientists a complete system that facilitates 1) planning and designing the experiment, 2) backing up data with automatic version-control, 3) tracking samples via auto-generated Excel worksheets, 4) providing separate pages in the wiki for organizing different collaborators? contributions, 5) communicating with data analysts for secondary analysis or performing a meta-analysis across multiple experiments, and 6) constructing all necessary components for release of experimental data (upon publication of the study) via public repositories (e.g. CEBS hosted by NIEHS). With the EPA WikiLIMS data management and storage system, EPA scientists save time and easily, efficiently and securely manage their experimental studies in a single integrated system. [This abstract does not necessarily reflect the views of the EPA or represent EPA endorsement of any product.]