The Phillip T. and Susan M. Ragon Institute was officially established in February 2009 at MGH, MIT and Harvard with a dual mission: to contribute to the accelerated discovery of an HIV/AIDS vaccine and subsequently to establish itself as a world leader in the collaborative study of immunology. Prior to 2009, the organization conducted its work as the Partners AIDS Research Center, part of the now Mass General Brigham health system. The Institute’s work touches the lives of patients around the world, with active research being conducted among patient populations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
J2 developed a sophisticated web-based workflow system, built using Adobe Flex and InterSystems Caché, designed to assist the Institute’s research team in the collection and analysis of highly complex data about the HIV virus in its many forms. The data being managed by the system includes anonymized patient demographics, detailed genetic information, blood sample inventory, and several classes of test results that show the interactions between patient samples and any of hundreds of distinct peptides.
When the application was rolled out, it revolutionized the way in which immunologists at the Institute identify patients for study, request samples and tests from the various patient populations, cross-reference results from multiple patients and assays, and perform longitudinal analysis on individual patients to determine the efficacy of different courses of treatment. Further enhancements added support for new research workflows, ensured compliance with institutional review board requirements, and introduced online graphical analysis capabilities.
As of 2020, J2 reviewed, redesigned, and updated this immunology web application UI, as Flex is no longer supported by Adobe. J2 migrated the Flex UI to Angular and updated the application code as needed to support the new Angular UI framework.
The Ragon Institute now operates on this improved framework to continue their research viruses such as HIV and COVID-19.
