The EUBIROD Network

1^st Annual EUBIROD meeting

Dasman Center for Research and Treatment of Diabetes, Kuwait City

Kuwait City, Kuwait, 2^nd-4^th May 2009

BIRO Software

V.Baglioni, U.Perugia, Italy

First BIRO Academy Residential Course, Kuwait City, Kuwait, 2nd May 2009

The BIRO system, available in the public domain as open source software through the GPL, will be intensely tested in the framework of the EUBIROD project. The BIRO Academy will be in charge of the dissemination of the approach and should facilitation adoption ot the software.

In this presentation, Valentina Baglioni, a professional software engineer from the University of Perugia, provides an overview on the usage of the software. The BIRO system runs on average PC Desktop/Notebook with at least 1Gb RAM, >200Gb Hard Disk and High Speed Network connection for use with Central Server. It has been successfully tested on Linux Fedora 10 and Microsoft Windows/Vista. To be properly run, it requires Java, R, Latex (Miktek), and an updated BIRO setup.

Valentina Baglioni reminds that BIRO users shall have a total of six well-structured datasets available to properly run the software: the “merge table”, the “activity table”, the “population table”, the “diabetic population table”, the “site header and profile” information, the “geographical table”. Data fields of these tables must comply with the BIRO Common Dataset and XML Dictionary, whose structures are well described in the documentation of the BIRO project freely available at the official website.

In her brief, Valentina also presents the BIROBox as the main point of entry to the usage of the software to a user with average skills. A setup file is included with the main BIRO software bundle, which also creates the BIRO System directory structure. The setup contains all source code, libraries and documentation required for the BIRO System to operate.

The BIROBox includes an “adaptor” that automatically extracts a standardized BIRO export from local data. It also embodies a utility to load the export on a Postgres database and a launcher to configure and run the statistical engine, which ultimately creates local reports and formatted statistical tables. As a final screen, it includes a routine to safely transmit tables to the central BIRO server. The central server is operated by a BIRO administrator whose operational details are outside the scope of the current presentation.