In February 2009, the Health Sciences South Carolina (HSSC) Board of Directors and Chief Information Officer Committee approved the HSSC information technology (IT) business plan, clearing the way for its execution. After an extensive evaluation and negotiation process, contracts were initiated with world-class IT companies to assist HSSC in creating an unprecedented statewide IT infrastructure to support research and healthcare quality improvement.
Sun Microsystems and Recombinant Data Corporation have been contracted to provide an Enterprise Master Patient Index and Clinical Research Data Warehouse. Sun Microsystems has been contracted to provide the server hardware housed at Clemson University’s Data Center.
ClickCommerce was contracted to prove the electronic institutional review board (IRB) system for the entire HSSC collaborative. This project is nearly complete. Collexis was contracted to provide expert profiling and social networking tools for scientists.
The rapid implementation of SCIPR is crucial because it allows HSSC to streamline and accelerate research projects, facilitate data collection and analysis, and successfully compete for funding from the National Institute of Health and other federal sources that South Carolina desperately needs. In addition, it will help HSSC attract commercial clinical trials from the pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostic industries.
