Managing IT Project to support research at Queen's University Belfast

Below I describe how I have built an IT system costing £15,000 for a multi-million pound project researching human ageing.

What is NICOLA Project?

NICOLA is an acronym for Northern Ireland Cohort Longitudinal Study of Ageing.
It is a multi-million pound project which provides a complete picture (factoring in 6000 variables) of an ageing population across Northern Ireland. It covers some 8500 participants of 50+ years of age. As this study is a longitudinal project, participants are contacted in waves every 2-4 years, in order to update information about their lifestyle, physical condition and various other areas covered by the study.
More information about the project is available from its website:

http://nicola.qub.ac.uk/

Staff in NICOLA have state of the art diagnostic equipment at their disposal used by NASA to name one of other users (NASA uses this equipment to test their astronauts), NICOLA is the only place in Northern Ireland that has such equipment, therefore it is beneficial to the subjects to take part in this study as some of health conditions discovered by the project team and patients can refer themselves back to GP for further treatment.

The data is anonymised, cleaned, processed and researchers can apply for ethical and governance approval to access anonymised data.

There are long term plans to improve data availability by setting up a portal that would provide selected anonymised data to ethical and governance approved researchers. This is however subject to the fulfilment of legal requirements pertaining to data protection and freedom of information. At this time I have detailed plans as to how I will implement this portal from an IT perspective.

More detailed description of the project and data flow.

PDF file with Projects' Gantt diagram (178KB), use zoom when open to see details

Initially data was received from the Business Services Organisation (BSO) which provides a broad range of regional business support functions and specialist professional services to the health and social care sector in Northern Ireland. This data comprised a list of addresses (no names) where at least one person over 50 years old was registered.

That data were then handed over to market research company Ipsos-MORI, a commercial organisation specialising in market research, which sends representatives to these addresses in order to invite, obtain consent,conduct an initial interview using approved by QUB ethics questions. The data gathered is processed by MRC and is sent to us in SPSS format matching our specifications. A further self completer (SCQ) questionnaire is given to each participant to provide more detailed data. In total there are some 6000 variables being assessed. MRC also supply us with data pertaining to the demographics of all visited addresses on a weekly basis. Study subjects are then included into our database (subject to their permission) and contacted by NICOLA staff in order to arrange clinical assessment in Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Trust Belfast.

Data collected by qualified and specifical trained research nurses during the clinical assessments is stored in one database server (nicola2) and securely transferred to another (nicola1) which is located in the University department, CPH at the Queen’s University section in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. This procedure is performed both for data security in case one of the servers should become damaged for some reasons, and also for convenient access for researchers.

It should be noted that the data once received from Ipsos-MORI is kept secure at all times. It is encrypted and access to it is restricted.

My part in NICOLA Project.

I have studied extensively in areas such as software design, IT project management, database management, programming languages etc. My studies took place at a leading IT school (The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Automatics, Computer Science and Biomedical Engineering) at the AGH University of Science and Technology (Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza im. Stanisława Staszica) in Krakow, Poland.

I manage all IT aspects of NICOLA project including web management, in essence this means that I work alone to design, develop, test and implement all IT solutions related to the project.
NICOLA si only part of my work. I constantly manage 7 database servers hosting 27 datasets.

My work on the NICOLA project itself is detailed below.

NICOLA IT Project management stages:

1. Preparation

1.1. Identify the broad overall IT needs of the project.

2. Planning

2.1. Liaise with all interested parties in order to gather detailed information about what they need and to anticipate what they might need in the future.

2.2. Identify problems and obstacles to be overcome whilst meeting these needs.

2.3. Evaluate what software should be used - taking into account features, performance, price, support and scalability.

2.4. Evaluate what hardware should be used – taking into account the project requirements, pricing, support and scalability.

2.5. Networking

3. Execution

3.1. Identify the most competitive supplier.

3.2. Place orders.

3.3. Assemble components.

3.4. Test.

3.5. Implement basic software (operating systems and software)

3.6. Implement networking (or alternatives)

3.7. Design, develop, test and implement software to support specific project requirements

3.8. Documentation

4. Control

4.1. Liaise with interested parties to find out if the project is working as they expected

4.2. Respond to any problem reports / bug reports in order to ensure uninterrupted workflow

4.3. Revise documentation

5. Closure

5.1. This part of the project is not really formal as longitudinal studies continue to run over years or decades. In this case each wave of the study would be a closure point.