IT Innovation Contest

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Mouse - Mouse Room Data Collection App

Submitted by Richard Tabor on August 3, 2012 - 8:10pm Last revised by Web Producer on August 25, 2014 - 10:06am.
Proposal Status: 
Review Complete

UCSF has a very large population of mice and many hours are spent by
research groups tracking their colonies. Currently, mouse room data
is collected in a variety of ways (by paper, having to use a computer
that is across the room, laptops) none of which is very efficient.

While their is a need for an enterprise solution to mouse room
management, allowing users to use their cellphones, ipod touches,
ipads, etc. to capture the data into a database directly will help
with this front end process.

This app would immiedately be benificial for all the mousers (those that
spend many hours in mouse rooms).

The information that is already collected is stored in a variety of
databases and excel databases. The goal is to provide a flexible
interface such that this app can be used to interface to any of these
storage formats.

 

Team:

Marie Demcho-Wagor - is the admin for one of the CVRI labs and has many
years of experience and exposure to the mouse room data collection issues.

Richard Tabor - is a programmer/analyst

<tbd> an animal tech or a lab end user

 

Comments

Enrique Terrazas - August 4, 2012 - 2:16pm
Not sure I understand how the app is supposed to work ... if there are existing datasources, those datasources would need to be externally accessible somehow for the app to be able to either connect directly or connect to a server that negotiates the data exchange. This is especially challenging to interface with an excel spreadsheet. A centrally managed database would facilitate this greatly.

Richard Tabor - August 5, 2012 - 8:14am
Agreed. How the data is stored would not change with this app. So any issues with concurrency or access would be the same. I believe that ODBC would work as a connector for excel spreadsheets.

Thomas Mcmanus - August 4, 2012 - 3:06pm
Richard There is an ongoing development at UCS to develop a mouse iPad colony management App. It's a little more advanced than what you describe above, as it uses a centralized database. Contact me to find out more details.

Richard Tabor - August 5, 2012 - 8:11am
I understand that there is an ongoing effort and that effort is looking at a much more comprehensive solution. This app would only provide a front-end that would be able to interface to any number of data repositories whether it be mysql, filemaker, or even excel spreadsheets. The plan would be to use ODBC.

Commenting is closed.