X-search: an open access interface for cross-cohort exploration of the National Sleep Research Resource.

Background: The National Sleep Research Resource (NSRR) is a large-scale, openly shared, data repository of de-identified, highly curated clinical sleep data from multiple NIH-funded epidemiological studies. Although many data repositories allow users to browse their content, few support fine-grained, cross-cohort query and exploration at study-subject level. We introduce a cross-cohort query and exploration system, called X-search, to enable researchers to query patient cohort counts across a growing number of completed, NIH-funded studies in NSRR and explore the feasibility or likelihood of reusing the data for research studies.

The National Sleep Research Resource: towards a sleep data commons.

Objective: The gold standard for diagnosing sleep disorders is polysomnography, which generates extensive data about biophysical changes occurring during sleep. We developed the National Sleep Research Resource (NSRR), a comprehensive system for sharing sleep data. The NSRR embodies elements of a data commons aimed at accelerating research to address critical questions about the impact of sleep disorders on important health outcomes.

Scaling Up Scientific Discovery in Sleep Medicine: The National Sleep Research Resource.

Professional sleep societies have identified a need for strategic research in multiple areas that may benefit from access to and aggregation of large, multidimensional datasets. Technological advances provide opportunities to extract and analyze physiological signals and other biomedical information from datasets of unprecedented size, heterogeneity, and complexity. The National Institutes of Health has implemented a Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) initiative that aims to develop and disseminate state of the art big data access tools and analytical methods.

VISAGE: A Query Interface for Clinical Research.

We present the design and implementation of VISAGE (VISual AGgregator and Explorer), a query interface for clinical research. We follow a user-centered development approach and incorporate visual, ontological, searchable and explorative features in three interrelated components: Query Builder, Query Manager and Query Explorer. The Query Explorer provides novel on-line data mining capabilities for purposes such as hypothesis generation or cohort identification.