TCG’s LAMHDI Project Chronicled in New Book
Washington, DC (PRWEB) September 18, 2013 -- An article about a National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources project that was developed and managed by TCG is prominently featured in a recently published book, Animal Models for the Study of Human Disease. Judith Turner, a TCG vice president and project manager of LAMHDI—the initiative to Link Animal Models to Human Disease—is the author of the chapter.
The chapter, “Access to Resources: A Model Organism Database for Humans,” is one of 42 essays in the book published by Elsevier TNQ Books & Journals. The editor is P. Michael Conn of the Oregon Health and Science University.
According to the essay, “LAMHDI was designed to be a tool to help researchers fulfill the NIH mission of improving health and saving lives. LAMHDI allows researchers to find the most appropriate models of human disease by comparing disease models across species, and to access those models.”
The LAMHDI project, which ran from September 2008 through September 2011, was designed to gather and organize information about extant animal models across species and strains, and make it available and searchable through a Web interface. The initiative consisted of two components:
● A directory of available human-disease models that assisted researchers in finding information about those models, and supported experts who provided and organized such information.
● A knowledge-based portal that provided a single point of contact from which all models could be accessed and processed.
The TCG solution for building LAMHDI was threefold. First, TCG partnered with research institutions from the beginning, to ensure that the company’s work would meet the needs of the users and providers of information. This included collaboration with UCSD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Washington, and Jackson Laboratories. Second, TCG built on its partners’ work to take advantage of their efforts, both in data collection and curation, and in software functionality. Third, TCG built LAMHDI using open-source software so that the government and the researchers who use LAMHDI would not be hostage to a proprietary system.
In this new book, Ms. Turner discusses the lessons learned during the LAMHDI project, and the processes and structures created for collecting, organizing, improving, and sharing models and data, in an effort to help set a standard for future successful knowledge environments designed to help further scientific and medical research.
“LAMHDI was a very important project and we are very proud of Judith and her team’s work in shepherding and helping to spread the word about this important endeavor,” said TCG president Dan Turner. “NIH was our first customer and we are always at the ready to work with them in their mission to further advancements in biomedical research and human health.”
About TCG
TCG (http://www.tcg.com) is an award-winning small business that specializes in tailored information technology solutions and consulting services with a particular focus on grants management, collaboration platforms, and budget formulation and execution. TCG transforms information technology infrastructures and inconsistent processes to integrated environments built on reusable functionality, consistent business processes, and interoperable infrastructures. The multiple awards that TCG and its clients have received demonstrate the benefits of using best practices such as CMMI, ITIL, and PMBOK to meet complex technology and management needs.
TCG’s company goal is to save the US taxpayer $1 billion by 2016. So far the company has saved the government in excess of $425 million by automating once-costly processes, using time-saving and money-saving processes in developing code, helping the government restructure its business processes, and paying careful attention to the company’s own expenses on contracts.
David Cassidy, TCG, http://www.tcg.com, +1 (202) 742-8471, [email protected]
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