Resources for researchers

Developing a web app to facilitate research collaboration

The Center for Cancer Genome Discovery (CCGD) collaborates with basic, translational, and clinical investigators to discover genomic alterations in human cancer. To facilitate researchers’ access to CCGD’s new cancer genome analysis technologies, HCC developed an online system to facilitate submission and review of collaboration proposals.

The web app replaced and merged two outdated sites into one, which provides both potential collaborators and internal CCGD administrators with customized functionality.

The app manages the entire proposal review lifecycle: After a new user register and uploads a proposal, a CCGD administrator assigns faculty members and scientific advisors to form a review committee. Reviewers vet the proposal and submit their responses to proposals through the app. Admins easily monitor the the status of reviewers’ decisions and can quickly search and sort the data. Five distinct user roles provide different levels of access to the site.

More than 50 proposals have been processed through the web application in the past year.

Outreach card increases awareness

As the research and development group within the Precision Cancer Medicine effort at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Boston Children's Hospital, CCGD is a hub of collaboration. To increase the visibility of of CCGD’s collaboration opportunities, HCC also developed an at-a-glance outreach card that is distributed to the research community at conferences and other events.