DataHub provides data management services for (non-)clinical studies in both the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences of Maastricht University and Maastricht UMC+. Their role is that of a data broker who enables the reuse of data by researchers in the university, the hospital and beyond.
DataHub aims to ease the burden on the researcher with regards to all aspects of data management and secure data storage, in order to save you time for doing where your heart lies: conducting research. DataHub works according to the FAIR principles and helps you making your data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.
Knowledge exchange and engagement are very important for being innovative and flexible for the research community. DataHub closely collaborates with other (support) departments. The multidisciplinary DataHub team consists of basic DataHub staff as well as colleagues from other departments who work at DataHub on a regular basis. This close collaboration is embodied in the DataHub community.
"The intensive collaboration with DataHub as a centralized data broker will enable the Maastricht Study to increase data findability."
The Maastricht Study (DMS) is a unique study aiming to create a better insight in the prevalence, causes and treatment of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and other chronic conditions. The Maastricht Study has gathered massive amounts of data that are valuable resources for researchers within the Maastricht UMC+. To further increase the visibility and findability of these data, a collaboration between DMS, DataHub and MEMIC has been set up.
The parameters measured (metadata) within the Maastricht Study have been catalogued, structured and annotated with SNOMED CT terms. These highly enriched metadata are already available in the DataHub data discovery environment DISQOVER and are regularly updated. Researchers can search through the DMS metadata and combine them with all other public and private data available within the DataHub DISQOVER environment.
“M4I needs an archive of M4I research data. Our current network working directories don't have much space left. The DataHub services provide a project archive solution in order to free space on our working directories."
M4I is a state-of-the art molecular imaging institute that brings together a powerful palette of high-end, innovative imaging technologies. M4I gathers massive amounts of data. DataHub provides research data management services that enable M4I researchers to keep oversight of their project data, regardless of the data format. M4I also closely collaborates with DataHub to make sure that in the near future research data generated at M4I comply to the FAIR principles.
Research data can be annotated with semantically enriched metadata in the DataHub web portal. In this way, M4I researchers are guaranteed that their data is stored safe and can be retrieved through the research data warehouse by themselves or their colleagues.
"Together with DataHub we are working on a storage solution that is dedicated for clinical imaging data and also allows online processing and analysis of this data without the need for downloading it first."
Medical imaging, such as obtained with Computed Tomography (CT) or Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has become very common in clinical practice. Apart from their clinical usefulness, CT and MR images also contain a wealth of information for research purposes. DataHub already has general-purpose data storage facilities in place, but is now working on a storage solution that is dedicated for clinical imaging data and also allows online processing and analysis of this data without the need for downloading it first.
The majority of the data is in DICOM format and needs to be anonymised because DICOM files contain privacy-sensitive information about the patient. At DataHub we will setup an environment where anonymisation can happen automatically as soon as images are uploaded/ingested into DataHub.