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The History of BLIPS
The
British Lupus Integrated Prospective System, or BLIPS as it is known, is the
result of 10 years of collaboration between British Isles Lupus Assessment Group
(BILAG) and ADS-Limathon.
Since 1984, the BILAG group has been monitoring thousands of
patients with the autoimmune disease Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). Many
authoritative clinical papers have emanated from the group and they have
documented a complex index for assessing and controlling the disease. For ADS,
the project started out in 1996 as a simple data migration of a legacy BILAG
database into MS Access 2.0. Blips Version 1.0 was born. Currently at Version
4.0 and now powered by Microsoft Access XP, it has evolved over ten years, to
become a highly sought after tool for Lupus researchers worldwide. BLIPS Version One was released exclusively to the Bilag group in 1998 as a direct replacement for their old DOS BILAG database. It included a completely new GUI interface for the BILAG index – monitoring of eight clinical systems – mucocutaneous, immunological, vascular, haematological, cardiovascular, biochemical neurological, musculoskeletal, and added new functionality recording of medication drugs and laboratory results. The software calculation algorithm was validated for the BILAG group by Birmingham University, by checking against their database containing 12,000 assessments.
BLIPS Version Two
in 1999 added two further
internationally recognised indices – SLICC and SF-36. Graphing of results was
introduced to the functionality, and the product became a network client-server
application.
Blips Version 3.0 was released worldwide in 2000
allowing non-BILAG clinics to obtain the tool. Version 3.0 included two more indices, SLAM-R and Selena Sledai. It was recoded in Access 97
and a 100-page user guide and helptext were added. BLIPS 3.0 is now in use in
major universities and hospitals throughout the UK, USA and Canada and as far a
field as China, Korea, Australia and the Philippines. During
BLIPS Version 4.0 was released first released in a
bespoke Clinical Study version in November 2005.
BLIPS Version 5.0 is the latest release which came
in 2008. BLIPS is now in use in over 30 countries around the world, and since release around 200 users have registered their copies. BLIPS in the Future In a separate development, ADS-Limathon have been working with Ionasys Incorporated and have developed a web enabled version of BLIPS, known as i-BLIPS. Based on the BLIPS 4.0 calculation algorithm, the product retains many of the familiar features of BLIPS, but instead of being MS Access based, it is written in Java, and runs TOMCAT and a MYSQL database, located on a hosted server. This will be initially aimed at Clinical Studies but it may also prove valuable to collaborating clinics such as BILAG and SLICC. It provides the Study Organisers all the major benefits associated with internet applications, including a central database and a simple front end deployment in Internet Explorer. No installation on the users PC is required. After the user has been registered in the database, it is a simple task of entering the web address, and logging on with a user name and password.
i-BLIPS
Version 1.0
Gordon Hamilton, August 2008 |
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