Biomedical Informatics & Analytics

Research Informatics Core (RIC)

The purpose of the Arkansas Children's Research Informatics Core (RIC) is to support investigators and researchers to gain access to state-of-the-art research tools and technologies for biomedical research.

About Us

The Research Informatics team at Arkansas Children’s Research Institute provides services and tools that enable investigators to conduct research. The Research Informatics team emphasizes biomedical informatics as an approach to facilitating research projects and assisting investigators with the daily use of research database systems and with clinical/operational support requests. The Research Informatics team maintains state-of-the-art research tools and technologies.

Our Services

Data Management

• Manage the life cycle of research informatics projects:
  • Define research and project needs with investigators and manage the delivery of project deliverables.
  • Devise and implement policies and standard operating procedures with attention to data security and efficiency of data handling and management.
• Manage research informatics tools such as RAiA, TriNetX, and ACT, and assist in developing the Research Data Capture (REDCap) and PHIS systems.

Development

• Retrieve data for approved research, quality improvement, and operational support projects, primarily through the electronic medical record repository as well as other resources such as RAiA, TriNetX, and the Children’s Hospital Association’s (CHA) Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS), among others.
• Define ways to organize, store, and analyze data with attention to security and confidentiality.

Support and Training

• Support Arkansas Children’s and UAMS investigators in the daily use of research database systems.
• Develop and conduct training for Arkansas Children’s and UAMS investigators with a focus on teaching best practices to enhance data efficiency, collection, and security.
• Provide continuing service request support for database projects, including access, security, maintenance, and enhancement. 

Child Health Biomedical Informatics

ACRI and UAMS have established the Division of Child Health Biomedical Informatics within the UAMS Department of Biomedical Informatics. Housed at ACRI, Child Health Biomedical Informatics provides a focal point for team science research involving state-of-the-art quantitative analytics across the spectrum from molecules (bioinformatics) to human populations (public health informatics). This team is an academic focal point for informatics professionals with primary appointments in other departments and institutes. Division faculty also work closely with ACH Information Technology to define network, storage, and computational capabilities to support the ACRI research community. Current projects include establishing ACRI high-performance computing, private cloud computing, petabyte-scale storage systems, and a research data repository. In collaboration with ACH Clinical Informatics, Child Health Biomedical Informatics is also working to establish the ARLife resource that enables researchers to track parent/child dyads across the ACH and UAMS electronic health records and the Arkansas All Payers Claims Database. The Child Health Biomedical Informatics collaborates with the ACRI Biostatistics Core to provide research design consultation, data management, and machine learning-based analyses.