How IBD Plexus Works

IBD Plexus® provides access to data and biosamples across research initiatives from a single point by using innovative technology to capture, organize, and share large amounts of data on individuals with IBD, and to link and mine this data for insights into causes and treatments.

Researchers Access Data in Five Streamlined Steps

  1. Explore data 
    Explore research-grade clinical and patient-reported data linked to biosamples across multiple multicenter research initiatives to gain insights, generate research questions, and validate hypotheses
  2. Visualize data
    Visualize the data to further refine a hypothesis or research question and select your population of interest
  3. Access biosamples and data
    Submit a request to gain expedited access to research-ready data and biosamples versus having to conduct denovo research
  4. Analyze data and biosamples
    Analyze data and biosamples to advance science, accelerate precision medicine, and improve the care of IBD patients
  5. Contribute back to the research community
    Contribute newly generated, project-specific raw data back into IBD Plexus. IBD Plexus' "exchange" model functions under this guiding principle: the community who takes advantage of the resources will also contribute to building them by depositing data back into IBD Plexus for the community’s benefit

The Technology of IBD Plexus

Data & Analytics Platforms

Deloitte Consulting was selected to build the data management and analytics platforms in order to:

  • House and organize structured and unstructured data from diverse sources such as electronic health records
  • Provide access to tools providing querying capabilities to gain insights and validate hypotheses and visualize data
  • Allow for expedited access to research-ready datasets and biosamples

Patient and Clinician Portals

Salesforce, the leading customer relationship management software, is a key component to the execution of our patient engagement and retention strategies, which are crucial for long-term follow-up studies. IBD Plexus is leveraging Salesforce for:

  • Study registration and obtaining and tracking patient consent
  • Building out protocol-specific clinical forms and patient surveys

Biobank and LIMS

IBD Plexus uses one centralized biobank, BioStorage Technologies, a leader in sample management, to store, process and distribute samples. The biosample metadata provided by BioStorage’s laboratory information management system is crucial for the generation of integrative serial analysis of a range of biosamples (i.e., blood, intestinal tissue, and stool) linked to clinical, patient-reported, and molecular data.

Infrastructure and High-Performance Computing

IBD Plexus Data & Analytics platforms sit on IBM’s Bluemix high-performance computing servers which are comprised of both bare metal and dedicated virtual servers. This hybrid infrastructure approach gives our partners – medical centers, academic institutions, and patients – the confidence to allow IBD Plexus to have direct access to their data.

Central Reference Labs

IBD Plexus optimizes the use of samples across the researcher community by converting biosamples to data.  A crucial component to sharing this biosample data is creating uniform datasets by ensuring the same assays and protocols are used. Central reference labs will ensure standard generation of molecular data to mitigate against batch effects and ease sharing.