nSIGHT™: A Data Discovery Platform for Visualization, Integration and Retrospective Analysis of Multimodal Clinical Research Data

The lack of interoperability among clinical and research data systems poses a significant barrier to cancer researchers interested in evaluating novel mechanistic hypotheses or translating innovative treatment strategies from the laboratory to the clinic. To address this gap in knowledge, we developed an innovative, web-based, data discovery, visualization and analysis tool (nSight) that allows researchers to quickly and easily query clinical/research data and construct de-identified cancer cohorts. Guiding principles for development of the tool were focused on ease of use, intuitiveness, self-service, and presentation of structured but de-identified data to the end user. nSight provides users with information on patient demographics, disease histology, diagnostic procedures and therapeutic interventions, timeline of disease progression/recurrence, along with available molecular profiling/sequencing data and indicators of participation in epidemiologic or lifestyle studies for specific cancer patient cohorts. The platform also allows users to obtain summary statistics based on demographic, histologic and clinical factors as well as perform basic survival analysis using Kaplan-Meier curves between specific patient cohorts. nSight is an intuitive, user-friendly tool that enables visualization, integration and analysis of multimodal clinical and research data without placing high technical demands or time constraints on researchers. The platform is designed for research feasibility assessment, cohort development, and retrospective data discovery, which in turn should help investigators identify potential study populations and explore novel hypotheses.