Use Cases

The HeLx Appstore is the primary user experience component of the HeLx data science platform.

HeLx can be applied in many domains. It's ability to empower researchers to leverage advanced analytical tools without installation or other infrastructure concerns has broad reaching benefits.

EduHeLx

EduHeLx was developed to address the needs of courses with programming components and currently supports programming using Python and R. Previously, students were required to download a course’s programming software onto their own computers, and instructors had to work one-on-one with students to troubleshoot issues throughout the semester; this was so time-consuming that it took away from teaching time and derailed course schedules, especially in computer science courses with more than 250 students.

TraCS

The OMOP Research Data Repository (Deidentified) project (ORDR-D) is a proposed to solution for a number of challenges facing researchers:

• Ever-increasing demand for data

• Quick-turnaround requests with complex needs and hard deadlines

• Lack of infrastructure to support researchers wanting to work with large amounts of data

• Desire to "tinker" with data post-provisioning ("Just one more thing...")

HeLx supports the user functionality and system functionality for ORDR-D. This includes deidentified CDWH data in OMOP format to the RENCI Secure Enclave (hosted at ITS Manning), a data environment that has been approved for HIPAA data; management of the user interface that enables users to interact with/analyze this data; and providing UNC users with the ability to apply for access on a project-by-project basis.

READDI-AC

The Rapidly Emerging Antiviral Drug Development Initiatives AViDD Center (READDI-AC) platform is a response to the Emerging Viruses (EV) constantly arising from zoonotic reservoirs to threaten global health and economic stability, as illustrated by the ongoing COVID19 pandemic.

READDI-AC integrates cutting-edge discovery-based academic science with product development-oriented industrial drug development transforming the historically reactive landscape of emerging virus drug development to one that is proactive.

A component of READDI-AC is the data management core, relying on HeLx for the ingestion of multiple types of data.

BRAIN-I

BRAIN-I investigators create large images of brain tissue which are then visualized and analyzed using a variety of tools which, architecturally, are not web applications but traditional desktop environments. These include image viewers like ImageJ and Napari. Appstore presents these kinds of workspaces using CloudTop, a Linux desktop with screen sharing software and adapters for presenting that interface via a web browser. CloudTop allows us to create HeLx apps for ImageJ, Napari, and other visualization tools. These tools would be time consuming, complex, and error prone, for researchers to install and would still require them to acquire the data. With CloudTop, the system can be run colocated with the data with no installation required.

SciDAS

The Scientific Data Analysis at Scale project brings large scale computational workflow for research to cloud and on premise computing. Using the appstore, users are able to launch Nextflow API, a web based user interface to the Nextflow workflow engine. Through that interface and associated tools, they are able to stage data into the system through a variety of protocols, execute Nextflow workflows such as the GPU accelerated KINK workflow. Appstore and associated infrastructure has run KINK on the Google Kubernetes Engine and is being installed on the Nautilus Optiputer.

ReCCAP

RestartingResearch is a research project that is used for data management and analytics of COVID-19 RT-PCR and custom Antibody tests of UNC researchers using on-campus laboratories and facilities. ReCCAP uses Blackbalsam and Jupyter Data Science Jupyter notebooks in Python and R kernels as environments for data science experimentation. For more information, see the blackbalsam documentation.