Biomedical Research and Integrated Biobanking: An Innovative Paradigm for Heterogeneous Data Management

This doctoral thesis
reports on an innovative data repository offering adaptive metadata management
to maximise information sharing and comprehension in multidisciplinary and
geographically distributed collaborations.  It approaches metadata as a fluid,
loosely structured and dynamical process rather than a fixed product, and
describes the development of a novel data management platform based on a
schemaless JSON data model, which represents the first fully JSON-based
metadata repository designed for the biomedical sciences. Results obtained
in various application scenarios (e.g. integrated biobanking, functional
genomics and computational neuroscience) and corresponding performance tests
are reported on in detail. Last but not least, the book offers a systematic
overview of data platforms commonly used in the biomedical sciences, together
with a fresh perspective on the role of and tools for data sharing and
heterogeneous data integration in contemporary biomedical research.