Globus provides framework for breakthrough tool to investigate how environments impact people’s health

There are many environments that play a role in people’s health such as where we are born, where we live, how much money we have and our exposure to sunshine, violence and more. The entire lived experience, the “sociome”, encompasses social, environmental, behavioral and psychological factors that can influence one’s health.

The Institute for Translational Medicine (ITM) in partnership with a group of users across the University of Chicago, Rush, Advocate Aurora Health and Loyola Endeavor Health, are currently piloting a breakthrough tool, the Sociome Data Commons (SDC). Researchers, clinicians and public health officials can access and analyze data from 20 curated datasets to learn what makes us healthy or sick.

The idea was conceived by Dr. Julian Soloway, a pediatric pulmonologist, who wanted to do research regarding University of Chicago pediatric asthma patients on the South Side of Chicago. He wanted to explore his patients’ lived experiences - where they live, breathe, eat, shop, worship, go to school, and how this influences their asthma and their health.

A data repository was created as a proof of concept using Globus services, integrated via the Globus Django Portal Framework. It provides users with an intuitive user interface to search and discover relevant, curated data sets. The pilot users, who have been added to Globus groups, can now log in to the service, access particular data collections, and download selected data for further analysis

The centralized commons provides institutions with a cost-effective solution. It reduces the cost of managing, curating and processing data; and provides a means for data storage and preservation (even large data sets.) Additionally, the SDC, with its built-in security and privacy controls, leads to secure, reliable multi-institutional data sharing and FAIR reproducible science and high value research.

Globus, with its fine-grained access controls, along with a High Assurance subscription, enables users of SDC to access the curated datasets down to the census tract level. As a result of curating and storing the data in SDC, these public data sets are also preserved.