Cardiff University'sDepartment of
Pathology has installed adatabase systemthat has enabled them
to easily store, extract and analyse complicated data.
The department, which researches kidney cancer and renal
transplants, previously recorded data on separate Excel sheets,
which later needed to be collated for analysis.
The department's projects require the collection of data from
different sources that then need to be analysed as a single
dataset. Problems were caused because duplicate data was created,
only one person could work on a document at a time, and analysis
was not possible until all the data was collated.
David Griffiths said the new Filemaker system has improved the
efficiency of the pathology department, which employs 50
people.
He said, "It has made projects that were previously very
difficult because of time constraints much easier, because of the
data handling capabilities."
Research staff can now download data from the Filemaker
programme to a statistical programme, meaning they can produce
analyses with real-time data.
"We can now collate data from disparate sources," said
Griffiths. "It can be got up and running extremely quickly, so we
can spend our time collecting the data rather than making the
database."
Students contribute to the database via a web interface or a
Filemaker client, and data can be saved over long-term five or ten
year projects.
Griffiths said, "We can do things we would struggle to do
otherwise. There are a couple of projects we do not have any
specific funding for, so they are done in our spare time. We would
not be able to do this unless we had an efficient system."