The Study Team for Early Life Asthma Research (STELAR) consortium ‘Asthma e-lab’: team science bringing data, methods and investigators together

Thorax doi:10.1136/thoraxjnl-2015-206781

• Chest clinic

• Audit, research and guideline update

1. Adnan Custovic1, 
2. John Ainsworth2, 
3. Hasan Arshad3,4,5, 
4. Christopher Bishop6, 
5. Iain Buchan2,
6. Paul Cullinan7, 
7. Graham Devereux8, 
8. John Henderson9, 
9. John Holloway4,
10. Graham Roberts3,5,10, 
11. Steve Turner8, 
12. Ashley Woodcock1, 
13. Angela Simpson1

+¹Centre for Respiratory Medicine and Allergy, Institute of Inflammation and Repair, University of Manchester and University Hospital of South Manchester, Manchester, UK
²Centre for Health Informatics, Institute of Population Health, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
³David Hide Asthma and Allergy Research Centre, St Mary's Hospital, Newport, Isle of Wight, UK
⁴Clinical and Experimental Sciences Academic Unit, University of Southampton Faculty of Medicine, Southampton, UK
⁵NIHR Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust, Southampton, UK
⁶Microsoft Research Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
⁷Imperial College, London, UK
⁸Child Health, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK
⁹School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
¹⁰Human Developmental and Health Academic Unit, University of Southampton Faculty of Medicine, Southampton, UK

1. Correspondence to Professor Adnan Custovic, University of Manchester, University Hospital of South Manchester, Manchester M23 9LT, UK; adnan.custovic@manchester.ac.uk

Abstract

We created Asthma e-Lab, a secure web-based research environment to support consistent recording, description and sharing of data, computational/statistical methods and emerging findings across the five UK birth cohorts. The e-Lab serves as a data repository for our unified dataset and provides the computational resources and a scientific social network to support collaborative research.

All activities are transparent, and emerging findings are shared via the e-Lab, linked to explanations of analytical methods, thus enabling knowledge transfer. eLab facilitates the iterative interdisciplinary dialogue between clinicians, statisticians, computer scientists, mathematicians, geneticists and basic scientists, capturing collective thought behind the interpretations of findings.

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