SEATTLE – March 16, 2015 – The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in conjunction with LabKey Software, has developed and launched Argos, an application that provides the interface and analytical power that researchers and clinicians will use to search for important patterns in cancer development, progression and treatment response.
Argos is built on the Hutch Integrated Data Repository and Archive (HIDRA), which merges the thousands of medical records, databases and tissue inventories maintained by the Fred Hutch/University of Washington Cancer Consortium partners Fred Hutch, UW Medicine, Seattle Children’s and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. With Argos, Cancer Consortium partners will have access to a wealth of medical information, from patient background and diagnoses to treatment responses, and will eventually contain tumor genetic and molecular data.
“With Argos providing a simple and secure way to access HIDRA data, researchers can now mine this data to discover patterns in cancer diagnosis, progression and treatment outcomes, find the right patients for studies, and speed up the research process” said Paul Fearn, biomedical informatics director at Fred Hutch and the Cancer Consortium. “Having all of this clinical and molecular data readily available will enable us to accelerate towards delivery of more precise, personalized care for patients.”
Currently providing analytical tools to scientists researching brain, gastrointestinal, head and neck and thoracic cancers, Argos will eventually expand to include information for all cancers. Future updates will include new features and broader, deeper access to data, potentially allowing access to over 300,000 patient records.
Argos is currently available to Cancer Consortium members only, keeping medical information secure and confidential with levels of access depending on users’ roles and permissions.
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