Introduction to ERNE

The Early Detection Research Network brings together a bunch of hospitals and universities to share and collaborate on cancer biomarker research. One project of this collaboration is ERNE, the EDRN Resource Network Exchange.

ERNE is a "virtual specimen bank" that takes all of the specimen collection information at EDRN member sites and puts them together, giving researchers access to many more specimens than they would have locally. It works by installing a software component at each member site called the ERNE Product Server.

The job of the Product Server is to accept an incoming query for specimens, translate that query from the ERNE-generic format to the site-specific format (usually some kind of SQL), run the site-specific query, and then describe the matching specimens in the ERNE-generic format. Each Product Server is customized with a software component (a query handler) who's job is to understand the site-specific database structure. (For those familiar with Extract/Transform/Load, ERNE is doing the same thing, except in real-time and with no loading step.)

In order for a NASA developer to create the query handler, she must be familiar with your site's database structure. You create a mapping that tells how the tables and columns in your specimen database correspond to the ERNE-generic Common Data Elements (CDEs). Once you've described this correspondence to the CDEs, the NASA developer will create the query handler and send it to your Product Server using its built-in software updating features.

At this point, your site is now part of ERNE!