What is Open Source RexDB®?

The Research Exchange Database (RexDB®) is an extensible, web-native software platform that helps researchers securely collect, manage and share data. Unlike most data centralization tools, RexDB embraces the flexibility required to support the needs of dynamic scientific collaborations. RexDB systems can be regularly updated to meet the changing needs of ongoing research projects, allowing many modifications to be performed by nontechnical software users. RexDB is built on top of sustainable open-source components, ensuring that your research data will never be marooned in a proprietary format or a legacy system. A unique layered architecture allows novice and advanced users, data managers, statisticians, and local IT staff to effectively interact with the system, while a highly granular privileging model ensures easy compliance with local and federal regulations.

RexDB is presently the data collection, data warehousing, and data sharing software platform of choice for numerous longitudinal multidisciplinary research studies, including the Simons Foundation’s Simons Simplex Collection and Variation in Individuals Project, the Yale Child Study Center’s Yale Autism Research Database, and the centralized data solution at Emory University’s Marcus Autism Research Institute.  RexDB has also been integrated with the laboratory data management system used by Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository.

 

Who is it intended for?

RexDB was designed to enable analysts, researchers, and clinicians to better organize, clean, and query their data in an integrated and secure manner.  Not only does it allow for multiple methods of data capture to support surveys and forms, it stores data in a model that is optimized for human subject research.  And because it is integrated with RexQL™ (formerly HTSQL), the open-source research query language, it allows for ad hoc reporting in ways not possible with traditional tools.  Electronic Medical Record (EMR) integration?  Solved.  RexDB is the answer to managing research data elegantly and in close communication with center-wide EMR installations.

RexDB supports efficient reuse of data from multiple studies and multiple data types. For example, a typical RexDB install may integrate behavioral, medical, genomic, imaging, and biospecimen-inventory data from multiple studies on the same population into a unified searchable system. This integration allows translational researchers to ask questions like: “Across all studies in our center, show me the BAPQ, SRS, ADOS and ADI-R scores for everyone who has a verbal IQ above 75, no known genetic lesions at 16p11.2, and whose mother had a history of autoimmune disorders. OK, now limit the data set to those participants for whom we already have a live-cell-line biospecimen or those I have consent to re-contact.”

 

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