The Biomedical Research Infrastructure Software as a Service Kit (BRISSKit): technical description

Abstract

With biomedical research becoming ever more computationally intensive, the challenge is to find sophisticated software tools that can keep pace with new requirements, while still being easy to use and secure. We describe a technical implementation of an infrastructure to manage the full research ecosystem from participant management, to data and sample collection, and finally to data storage, interrogation and analysis. This infrastructure, known as the Biomedical Research Infrastructure Software as a Service Kit (BRISSKit http://www.brisskit.le.ac.uk), is built on open source solutions throughout, and demonstrates that it is possible for a biomedical research platform to be supplied as a service.