Best Practices Integrative Informatics Consultation Service (BPIC)
BPIC provides a one-stop consultation service to address the needs for high-level bioinformatics, high dimensionality data mining, database management, and health informatics services required by NYULMC research efforts. BPIC aims to integrate the biomedical informatics resources of NYU to create and disseminate best practices and to establish working relationships with NYU academic programs in mathematics, computer science and biology in the context of applied projects.
BPIC Objectives
BPIC Consultation Process
BPIC Policies and Billing Rates
Personnel
Walk-In Clinics
BPIC serves thus multiple objectives:
BPIC Objectives
(a) Identify and prioritize specific informatics research support needs across the medical center.
(b) Provide researchers with access to selected set of state-of-the-art bioinformatics tools and the resources necessary for data storage and computation to apply these tools to basic science, translational and clinical projects.
(c) Benchmark internally- and externally-developed methods, study and synthesize related literature to develop/disseminate existing best practice guidelines.
(d) Execute analyses or software on behalf of researchers, construct custom data analysis pipelines, or point to external resources capable of so doing.
(e) Provide expert bioinformatics and health informatics consultation and training to researchers for all stages of research from design to execution, to publication.
(f) Provide a dissemination channel and evaluation test bed for novel informatics methods developed by NYU researchers (e.g., in Computational Biology, Mathematics, Biostatistics, and Computer Science).
(g) Identify needs for new methods development and communicate these needs to the method developers closing the loop between methods development conception and deployment.
(h) Compile a bioinformatics reference resource with answers/solutions to common questions and research needs.
Functions (f) and (g) will be supported by the creation of a centralized registry of research needs and novel methods that are developed on campus. The registry will be populated with information elements generated both at the time of consultation with BPIC and off-line. It will enable a highly efficient “matchmaking service” between research needs and methods developers and tools at NYU and will be highly complementary with the Find a Researcher project. The BPIC will also provide an invaluable training ground for students enrolled in the planned NYU Graduate Training Program in Biomedical Informatics.
BPIC Consultation Process
In practice BPIC consulting encompasses three consecutive stages:
Stage 1: Initial consultation
In this phase the informatics consultants and researchers meet with the goals of:
a. Understanding study goals both from biological and technical/informatics perspectives.
b. Determining project feasibility broadly and at NYU specifically.
c. Assessing approximate resources needed for the project.
d. Deciding to proceed to stage 2 or, alternatively, conclude consultation.
Stage 2: Specialized informatics team develops tentative work plan
In this phase a small team of informatics faculty and staff discuss the project in detail and produce:
a. A plan for study execution.
b. The draft budget needed to cover necessary resources.
c. A decision to proceed with the execution of the plan after the plan is reviewed by the client and requested modifications are implemented.
Stage 3: Execution
BPIC Policies and Billing Rates
All researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center regardless of academic rank, funding or other condition can access BPIC services and resources generally on a first-come-first-served basis. Every effort will be made to accommodate out-of-order urgent requests as long as the PI-provides a reasonable justification and the PIs of the projects pushed back to accommodate the urgent request do not object.
All requests for consultation services will be received and routed by an informatician. Standard, short-term, one-time consultations typically take a few hours and will be handled by Informatics staff. Automated informatics work such as assay informatics and data storage and computing are typically charged on a TB, assay and CPU-time or other application basis. Long-term informatics collaboration will be managed by Informatics faculty and is typically covered through grant participation.
- Standard hourly rate: $80/hour
CTSI Investigators and Cancer Center Members: The Biomedical Informatics Cores of the CTSI and the Cancer Center have established their own priority queues for the use of BPIC services. Usage up to the limits detailed in respective budgets and capacity will be provided at a reduced chargeback rate of 25% of the usual institutionally approved rates, currently $20/hr. Usage beyond these limits will be charged at 100% of the usual institutionally approved chargeback rates, currently $80/hr.
Personnel
All CHIBI faculty are available for consultation within BPIC. In addition, the following faculty have specific roles and responsibilities:
Dr. Aliferis, serves as BPIC Scientific Director and is responsible for the design of its functions, its integration with the CTSI, its overall aims and for quality management.
Dr. Stuart Brown, serves as the Director of Operations of the BPIC responsible for day-to-day functionality and services.
Dr. Yuval Kluger is the Director of the Methods Registry and Lead Liaison with NYU main campus.
Dr. Alexander Statnikov is the Benchmarking Director of BPIC, responsible for conducting large scale evaluations of informatics methods and literature synthesis.
To arrange a consultation with BPIC please contact InformaticsConsultation@nyumc.org.
Walk-In Informatics Consulting Clinics Beginning October 20, 2010
The Best Practices Integrative Consulting Service (BPIC) of the Center for Health Informatics and Bioinformatics in collaboration and with the sponsorship of the NYU-HHC CTSI is launching a first-come-first-serve walk-in consulting clinic. This service is provided in addition to scheduled BPIC consulting in response to the interest expressed by NYLMC research faculty with informatics consultation needs. All areas of informatics are covered by expert informatics faculty as follows:
Bioinformatics
Every Wednesday from 3:00 to 5:00
227 E 30th Street, 7th Floor Conference Room #717
Participating Faculty:
Alexander Alekseyenko PhD
Constantin Aliferis MD, PhD
Stuart Brown PhD
David Fenyo PhD
Alexander Statnikov PhD
Jinhua Wang PhD
Jiri Zavadil PhD
Educational Informatics
Every 2nd Wednesday of the month from 11:00 to 12:00
Coles 202
Participating Faculty:
Marc Triola MD
Research Database/ Registry Development, Study Data Managements and Velos Use
Every 1st and 3rd Wednesday from 11:00 to 12:00
227 E 30th Street, 7th Floor Conference Room #717
Participating Faculty:
Jim Robinson MS
High Performance Computing
Every 1st and 3rd Wednesday from 2:00 to 3:00
227 E 30th Street, 7th Floor Conference Room #718
Participating Faculty:
Efstratios Efstathiadis PhD
Data Warehousing
Every 2nd Wednesday of the month from 11:00 to 12:00
227 E 30th Street, 7th Floor Conference Room #717
Participating Faculty:
John Chelico MD, MS
Alexander Statnikov PhD
Data Mining
Every 2nd Wednesday of the month from 11:00 to 12:00
227 E 30th Street, 7th Floor Conference Room #717
Participating Faculty:
Alexander Statnikov PhD
Constantin Aliferis MD, PhD
Information Retrieval, Scientometrics, and Text Categorization
Every 3rd Wednesday of the month from 11:30 to 12:30
227 E 30th Street, 7th Floor Conference Room #718
Participating Faculty:
Yin Aphinyanaphongs MD, PhD
Lawrence Fu PhD
Constantin Aliferis MD, PhD
The above schedule will be adjusted in terms of frequency and dates/times according to client needs and the ongoing evaluation of the service.
When possible, please provide any appropriate background information (e.g., specific aims) for your project or question in advance of your consultation. You can email materials to InformaticsConsultation@nyumc.org. In addition, please bring to the consultation any information that can facilitate your discussion with BPIC faculty.
This service is sponsored by the NYU Clinical and Translational Science Institute and is therefore free to researchers.
