Christchurch based Stratos Technology Partners has won a contract from the Australian charity, Crohn’s Colitis Cure (CCC), to develop a software system for a research project studying Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) sufferers in Australia and New Zealand. The research project involves 12 major hospital sites and is the largest and most important research project of its type ever undertaken in Australia and NZ.
Each hospital site obtains DNA and other data from patients diagnosed with IBD. This information is collated, codified and stored for use by researchers, PhD students and scientists, and forms a type of “DNA library”. To date, over 6,000 patients have been included in the database.
The research is being undertaken by the Australia and New Zealand Inflammatory Bowel Disease Consortium (ANZIBDC) and is funded by CCC from donations and government grants. The Consortium comprises a team of clinicians and scientists including the leading gastroenterologists in the field.
“Data security and preserving the privacy of patients was a critical part of this project. Creating a system that could efficiently support clinicians working in more than 12 different sites located across Australia and New Zealand was also a key consideration,” said David Carter. David heads the software development team at Stratos Technology Partners.
“We conducted a worldwide RFP process, and Stratos' proposal stood out from all the other proposals we received. They have had a lot of experience working within the healthcare sector, supporting other medical research. We’re looking forward to working with them,” said Andre Wierzbicki, CCC’s Acting CEO.
More than 70,000 Australians and 15,000 New Zealanders suffer from IBD. Sometimes called the “Hidden Tormenter,” IBD is a painful, debilitating and medically incurable illness that attacks the digestive system. IBD causes diarrhoea, abdominal pain, bleeding from the bowel, malnutrition and weight loss and can lead to complications such as major bowel surgery, abscesses and bowel cancer. The causes of IBD are not known, and the goal of the work of CCC and the Consortium is to work to identifying the causes and treatments for these diseases.
ABOUT STRATOS TECHNOLOGY PARTNERS
Stratos Technology Partners is an IT company that provides Software Development, Business Intelligence, SharePoint and IT Consulting services. It has clients in a wide range of industries across New Zealand and Australia. First established in 2011 as Canterbury Business Solutions, the company became Stratos Technology Partners in 2015.
Contact details: Stratos Technology Partners, 1st Floor, 167 Madras St, Christchurch, New Zealand. Phone +64 3 376 4525 info@stp.co.nz. www.stp.co.nz.
ABOUT CROHN’S COLITIS CURE
Crohn’s Colitis Cure is an Australian registered charity that has been established to support a medical research consortium (known as ANZIBDC),explicitly targeting inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s Disease and Ulcerative Colitis). ANZIBDC is a team of clinicians and scientists based at 12 IBD centres located at major hospital sites across Austraila and NZ who are undertaking critical research into IBD.
Contact details: Crohn’s Colitis Cure, (ABN 85 154 588 717), Suite 601, 438 Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, NSW, Australia 2010, ph + 61 2 8382 6622, fax + 61 2 8212 5859, info@c-c-cure.org, www.c-c-cure.org.