About us

BRISSKit is led by Dr Jonathan Tedds, Senior Research Fellow in Health And Research Data Informatics in the Department of Health Sciences at the University of Leicester. Jisc, working in partnership with the University of Leicester, investigated the development of BRISSKit into a service to be offered to UK universities as part of the Jisc portfolio during 2014-15.

The solution has been developed collaboratively to meet the requirements of the University of Leicester biomedical research groups in the cardiovascular, respiratory, genetics and health sciences as well as the University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust and national pilot partners. Maximum benefit has been gained by sharing experience with others notably the DCC, Jisc, Janet, HEFCE, OSSWatch, Eduserv, UCL Institute of Child Health, University of Birmingham and other institutions, assisted by Charles Beagrie Ltd, H2 Software Solutions Ltd, Reedmace Ltd, 4th Level IT Ltd, Guildfoss Ltd, Akriga Ltd and the University of Oxford.

BRISSkit was previously funded by the JISC UMF Shared Services and the Cloud Programme. Its main aim was to design, deliver and begin to exploit a national data hosting service for researchers in the field of Biomedicine and Bioinformatics. Components were provided based on open source developed solutions which can be hosted externally where appropriate and accessed securely over the UK Janet academic network. The service was originally developed in partnership between the University of Leicester and the Leicester Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit based at the Glenfield Hospital in the University Hospitals Leicester NHS Trust.

Documentation

Project specific documentation for the Jisc funded phases of work can be found here

Project team

The core project team has been based both at the Glenfield Hospital in the Cardiovascular Research Centre and on the main University of Leicester campus and more recently in the new state-of-the-art Centre for Medicine Building at the University of Leicester. We acknowledge the following individuals for their many and varied contributions since 2011.

Name Position
Martin Batty Manager, Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit, Glenfield Hospital
Neil Beagrie BRISSKit Sustainability Lead, Charles Beagrie Consultants Limited
Dr Tim Beck Clinical Ontology Mapper, Department of Genetics, University of Leicester
Prof. Anthony Brookes Bioinformatics Group Leader, Department of Genetics, University of Leicester
Dr Andrew Burnham Information Governance Lead, Senior IT Research Liaison Manager, University of Leicester
Prof. Paul Burton Professor of Infrastructural Epidemiology, Co-PI ALSPAC, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol
Dr Olly Butters ALSPAC Data Manager, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol
Andy Carruthers University Hospitals of Leicester Trust - IM&T
Daniela Duca Senior Co-design Manager, Jisc, London
Dr Rob Free Database Development Manager, NIHR Leicester Respiratory Biomedical Research Unit, University of Leicester
Prof. Alison Goodall LCBRU Principal Investigator, Department of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Leicester
Chris Greengrass Informatics Manager, Leicester Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit, Glenfield Hospital
Catherine Grout Head of change implementation support - research, Jisc, London
Saj Issa BRISSKit Technical Lead, H2 Software Solutions
Jeff Lusted BRISSKit Senior Software Developer, ReedMace
Malcolm Newbury BRISSKit Consultant in Open Healthcare Informatics, Guildfoss
Prof. Leong Loke Ng Professor of Medicine and Therapeutics, University of Leicester
Russ Parsloe BRISSKit Systems and Database Architect, 4th Level IT
David Rose Infrastructure Manager, UHL
Dr Chris Rudge Team Manager, IT Infrastructure Support Team, University of Leicester
Prof. Nilesh Samani Director, Leicester Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit, Glenfield Hospital
Prof. Kevin Schurer Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, University of Leicester
Tim Skelton Manager, Leicester and Loughborough Lifestyle Biomedical Research Unit, Glenfield Hospital
Prof. Ian Squire Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician, University of Leicester
Dr Jonathan Tedds BRISSKit Project Lead, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester
Dr Becca Wilson Research Associate, Data 2 Knowledge, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol
Gavin Whyman Bioresource Manager, Leicester Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit, Glenfield Hospital

Earlier project team members included:

Name Position
Robert Feakes Project Manager for Software Development, IT Services, University of Leicester, Marazan
Nicholas Garcia Database Officer, Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit, Glenfield Hospital
Debadutt Goswami Project Manager for Software Development, IT Services, University of Leicester
Will Lusted Software Developer
Dr Eddie May Software Developer, Fresh Web Services
John Milner UMF Programme Manager
Dave Morris Software Developer and Database Architect
Somaraja Surampudi Software Developer, Research Computing Service, University of Leicester
Mary Visser Chief Information Officer, University of Nottingham