CORE: Collaborative Orthopaedic Research Environment

Project title

Collaborative Orthopaedic Research Environment

Start date

01 November 2004

End date

30 November 2006

Lead institution

University of Southampton

Partner Institutions

Project manager & contact details

Dr Gary Wills

Direct Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 2831

Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 2865

e-mail: gbw@ecs.soton.ac.uk

Project web URL

www.core.ecs.soton.ac.uk

Overall description

Name of VRE solution/s

Collaborative Orthopaedic Research Environment

Description of VRE solution/s

The project provides integrated computer support across the research and educational cycles, because these activities are intrinsically coupled as a part of the requirements of the surgeon's Continuing Professional Development. The CORE allows surgeons to: create technical material (including non research material for education), analyse data (from their own trials or data entered from journals), investigate hypotheses (from their own work or as meta or thematic reviews), discuss the finding from their or others work, and prepare and submit articles for review.

Primary user group/s

Clinically based orthopaedic surgeons

Musculoskeletal Laboratory based orthopaedic surgeons

Functionality

The aim of this project is to allow surgeon (specifically orthopaedic surgeons) to analyse data from their clinical trials and produce a report/paper. The following function are given:

  • Purpose built (co-designed) user interface for collecting information relating to the operation undertaken.
  • Allows the generation of templates to capture the data (also automatically generates the database tables) for other clinical trials.
  • Allows the user to collate data from a repository.
  • Helps the user select the appropriate statistical test and analyses the data.
  • Provides a discussion forum and simple template for writing documents.

Benefits

The benefits to the clinical surgeons are that they can enter their case history as they would normally do each day and CORE will produce the documentation they would normally use. In addition the system allows them to collate and analyse these cases without have to re-enter the information into another environment. The project is currently being trialled in three hospitals (Southampton, Salisbury and Portsmouth).

For laboratory basic orthopaedics the benefits are they can use the Matlab models they normally use and have the facility to run large scale simulation from their desktop. This project is a demonstrator project and as such only shows the surgeons what is possible, yet the functionality it provides is robust.

Current level of maturity

The demonstrator is currently being trialled; we are expecting feedback, minor changes and bug fixes to take place.

Target level of maturity at end of project

The system will be realised with the current functionality working correctly and known bugs fixed.

Design & technical implemnetation

Technical implementation

The web portal was created using a.Net framework, with some of the services being developed in .Net and some in Java.

Architecture

The web portal was created using a .Net framework, with some of the services be developed in .Net (Analysis and Dataset manager) and some in Java (grid simulation).

VRE Solutions Core

Standards compliance

Please list the standards with which the solution complies.

  • HTML, http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/
  • XML, http://www.w3.org/XML/
  • WSDL, http://www.w3.org/TR/wsdl
  • SOAP, http://www.w3.org/TR/soap/
  • OAI, http://www.openarchives.org/

OMII middleware implements a host of grid and web standards please refer to the OMII website www.omii.org

Software availability

  • Source code: Not yet available but will be made available at the end of the project.
  • Binary/installable code: Not yet available.
  • WSDL www.core.ecs.soton.ac.uk
  • Hosted WebService: There is a hosted website, using the web services, for the surgeon to trial. Due to the sensitivity of hosting patient data this is behind the hospital firewall and there is no public access.

Documentation

From the project's website the following reports and academic papers can be accessed. The report presents the system from different angles, from system design to user requirement. See web site at the end of the project as more will be added.

Documentation for the Web Services

Reports

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