Conceptual schema of miRNA's expression: Using efficient information systems practices to manage and analyse data about miRNA expression studies in breast cancer

Abstract

Effective data management of clinical information is well-known to be a very complex task. The breast cancer context provides a good example of how challenging the problem is in Information Systems terms. In fact, it is one of the basic problems faced by clinicians who work in this area. However, this problem is even bigger when clinicians and biologists try to relate these data to biological data obtained from research studies about this disease. This paper shows how Conceptual Modeling practices provide reliable working environments where clinical and biological information are clearly linked. We focus on miRNAs expression studies in breast cancer patients as a representative study of biological data in this environment. Representing all these biological data using Conceptual Modeling techniques and connecting it with the clinical information properly modeled using the same technique, creates the appropriate background to develop an information system able to manage efficiently and analyze all this information.