IT Lab Web tools level information playing field
Don’t wait for another Charleston earthquake to bring down the walls at MUSC.A small group of excited, energetic and friendly folks housed in a small apartment on Ehrhardt Street are doing just that with Richter-scale innovations that shake the very foundations of traditional education.
“We’re opening the walls of the university,” said Frank Starmer, Ph.D., MUSC associate provost for information technology. “That’s been our focus and that’s how we decide what we’ll do.”
Starmer’s walls aren’t brick and mortar; they’re paper and ink, and conference rooms, and books, and file cabinets, and doors to rooms down the hall that are locked after-hours. “They’re anything that keeps faculty, staff and students from accessing anything from anywhere at any time,” Starmer said.
The
IT Lab staff include from left, Brian Dadin, Christopher Zorn, Dr. Frank
Starmer, Brian Crawford, Matthew Gregg and Satyajit P. Phanse.
His IT Lab—the “excited, energetic, friendly folks on Ehrhardt Street”—have been developing software prototypes to transition the university from a book and professor-centered institution to a more Internet-centered institution.
“The main idea,” Starmer explained, “is that the Internet levels the playing field by providing the student with access to the same information available to the professor. Our challenge is to develop Web tools that enable students, faculty and staff to harvest and transport information from anywhere to their desktop.”
So what are these innovations, these software prototypes?
Here are a few: They are the Rumor Mill, MUSC Bluesheet, broadcast e-mail, Web-based IRB submission, Web-based e-mail, backup e-mail, myMUSC and the university Internet firewall—all efforts spearheaded by MUSC’s IT Laboratory and led by Starmer.
Starmer and his crew recognized that commercial tools could not always provide timely solutions to MUSC problems. So they formed the IT lab as a way to rapidly build web-enabled solutions addressing MUSC needs. Instead of just being another programming shop, the focus of the IT lab has been and continues to be on developing tools that give MUSC students, faculty and staff the ability to cobble solutions to their individual problems.
All of the tools developed by the IT Lab (http://www.itlab.musc.edu) are part of what Starmer calls MUSC’s IT infrastructure. Expanding the idea of infrastructure beyond that of the routers and cables that link MUSC computers and the Internet together (and Internet2, the research Internet), Starmer’s IT Lab, often in collaboration with CCIT, has built an array of software tools that provide core functions such as authentication, Web page access control and data harvesting and data transport.
What are some of the major accomplishments of the IT Lab?
The provost’s information system (http://myprovost.itlab.musc.edu), led by Tom Higerd, Ph.D., is an example of using the IT Lab tools to harvest information from several different databases and build a composite file of faculty information. While building myProvost, the IT Lab built a generic tool for providing web access to databases. Named mySiteMaker, (http://www.itlab.musc.edu/mySiteMaker) the IT Lab offered it to the open source community.
Today, mySiteMaker is available in several languages and is in use around the world.
Since myProvost contained sensitive information, the IT Lab built the first prototype of a web-accessible authentication tool based on e-mail login and password. Today, Web-based authentication is embedded in many MUSC applications (including access to wireless access points) and has become an essential part of the IT infrastructure.
The Bluesheet, broadcast e-mail and the Rumor Mill are examples of a submit-and-process paradigm. In each instance, someone submits a Web form containing information that must be processed by someone else. Recognizing that this was a general need, the IT Lab designed a workflow manager so that when a document is submitted, it immediately appears in the workflow manager’s “inbox” window where it is processed and saved.
For example, when a seminar is scheduled, a Web form is submitted to a workflow manager in Public Relations where it is edited and stored in a database. From the database, a Blue Sheet print format and a content box for myMUSC (http://my.musc.edu the MUSC portal) are built as well as an RSS (rich site summary) feed that provides Internet users around the world with access to MUSC seminar events by packaging headlines for electronic distribution.
Jabber, (http://www.itlab.musc.edu/sluice/jabber.html) is an instant messenger service that is available to anyone with access to the MUSC network, and can be used to route messages, not only to another instant message site, but to a mobile phone, beeper or e-mail. Realizing that Jabber can direct general messages to a variety of destinations, the IT Lab has built the second generation workflow manager, called Sluice which currently runs the Rumor Mill, Worker’s Comp Injury Report and the Chart of Accounts Maintenance Request.
It seems that surveys are becoming a way of life at MUSC. So the IT Lab adapted phpESP, a tool for survey construction and administration. It is an example of collaboration between the IT Lab and the open-source community. Early drafts of the phpESP lacked essential features MUSC needed. Instead of writing its own survey tool, however, the IT Lab suggested changes to the developers of phpESP and in some cases, solutions to problems. The result was that a member of the IT Lab was invited to become part of the worldwide development team for Web-based surveys. The current version here at MUSC can be seen at http://survey.itlab.musc.edu.
Is it a good tool? To date, approximately 250 Web surveys have been built of which approximately 150 are active.
Finally, the IT Lab in partnership with CCIT, is building a gateway to move management information from UMS, the College of Medicine and Medical Center financial package, used at many locations in the College of Medicine, directly into the MUSC financial and personnel systems. When fully operational, the gateway will eliminate duplicate entry of requisitions and personnel information, thus facilitating timely input of information into management systems.
So what happens next?
CCIT and the IT lab are building and deploying tools that not only facilitate harvesting or data transport for all members of the MUSC community but allow many to build their own applications. Tools currently under development include a new myMUSC (see http://metadot.com for a list of links to other universities using metadot and the MUSC variant: https://my.itlab.musc.edu which is in testing, so it may not always be available).
Automatic data harvesting (e.g. aggregating journal table of contents on a daily basis) is a new need that arises from the rapid pace that new information appears on the Internet. The IT Lab is evaluating amphetadesk, a tool (http://amphetadesk.com) that provides automatic access to more than 1,000 remote sites from which headlines can be harvested (every hour), consolidated and displayed as a Web page.
The next five years will be exciting. The folks at the IT Lab and their colleagues at CCIT will be adding to MUSC’s IT infrastructure. MUSC will move ahead with IT components that enhance education, research, patient care and administration.
Anywhere-anytime access to many information resources is here today thanks to the IT Lab contributions to the MUSC IT infrastructure.
Most of the thousands of pages and pictures and links that comprise the Medical Center’s intranet are static in nature. Every once in a while static Web pages are not sufficient to meet the needs of a particular project and a dynamic page is required.
One example might be an employee satisfaction survey that is completed on line. Another example is the real-time querying of a database to get precisely the information that the user requires. When interactive Web pages are called for, I utilize tools made available by the IT Lab. Typically there are three components: a Web page, a database, and a script to connect the two.
The IT Lab helpfully provides guidance in the creation of Perl scripts
(a Web scripting language) and access to mySQL, an open source database.
Michael Irving
Clinical Services Administration and Intranet
Webmaster
The IT lab has worked quietly in the background developing a number of open, standards-based solutions that have greatly streamlined and simplified ways to accomplish a lot of work with minimal hassle.
One such tool is the phpESP survey tool, http://survey.itlab.musc.edu/admin/.If
you are ever in need of creating an online survey, this is the tool for
you. Simple, straight forward and intuitative. A survey can
be placed on the Web faster that you can write the questions. Data are
easily recovered and can be imported into your favorite analysis
program. This tool is a terrific metaphor of how computing should be done.
Tools that the average investigator can use.
Michael G. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Professor and Vice Chair
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Frank Starmer’s group and I have a long history of idea sharing and cooperation. I am always sure to mention this collaboration we share in the GCRC’s Annual Reports to the NIH.
I've begun development of a set of Web forms based on a technology known as XML. The XML file I create “describes” the information technology needs of a particular research protocol. The developed tools then generate the appropriate web forms for data entry based on visit, study group, etc. All of this is done on the fly and in real time.
The IT Lab has developed a tool known as mySiteMaker which allows an individual to “drill” through data stored in a database. Instead of being bombarded with a huge set of data, an individual can select only those items that interests him and then filter out the rest. The mySiteMaker interface allows people to ask, “What if?” It also has a feature to “edit” data in the database.
Each new GCRC research protocol gets a mySiteMaker interface to their data for statistical analysis purposes. The data can be viewed online, downloaded into a speadsheet application such as OpenOffice Calc and Microsoft Excel, or downloaded for importation into statistical systems SAS, SPSS, or Stata. People who have had the opportunity to use these interfaces have told me the interfaces are wonderful.
Thanks to the open source nature of the IT Lab’s tools, I have been
able to begin extending the mySiteMaker interface to allow for additional
features, such as “Saved Searches.”
James Bruce
GCRC Informatics Manager
The myMUSC tool created by the ITlab is extremely valuable to
me. It allowed me to custom-design my default browser homepage to include
a number of other tools made available through the ITlab: goodle search,
dictionary, broadcast messages, simon paging system, as well as a listing
of all the websites I use routinely. I am looking forward to the new updated
myMUSC tool which will include a set of new tools such as an online calendar.
Thierry Bacro, Ph.D.
Cell Biology and Anatomy
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