Research Computing History

 

Since Boston Children’s Hospital’s formation in 1869, research into pediatric diseases has been an integral part of our mission. Early research giants such as John Enders and Sidney Farber provided the basis that led to biostatistics in the early 1990s. Shortly thereafter biomedical, bioinformatics, genomics, and clinical research informatics (CRIT) emerged, fields that Research Computing supports today. 

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Research computing methods were developed at Boston Children’s Hospital as early as 1969. Under the leadership of pediatric cardiologist Don Fyler, MD and the New England Regional Infant Cardiac Program (NERICP), a Programmed Data Processor-9 (PDP-9) and digitizing table were used to calculate ventricular volumes from biplane angiograms. Following this first success, the program expanded to use a Prime minicomputer with the ability to accommodate up to 100 users simultaneously. With this, the cardiology computing unit was established. Cardiology research computing continued until the implementation of a hospital-wide microcomputer-based network. 

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Figure 1. Prime (left) and Pertec (right) minicomputers used at Boston Children’s Hospital, circa 1970-1980s. Boston Children’s Hospital Archives. 

 

As a department, Research Computing traces its history back to 1987, when computer use beyond financial and administrative functions for the hospital began to evolve. Over the course of three years beginning in 1987, Boston Children’s implemented a fully Integrated Hospital Information System (IHIS). IHIS formed a comprehensive hospital information network able to provide clinical researchers with advanced mathematical and statistical tools under the Information Systems Department (ISD) and thus created the department of Research Computing. Over time, the department’s services evolved from solely offering education on new computers to providing advice and assistance setting up and using databases for organized data collection for clinical and theoretical study programs that included basic, translational, and clinical and outcomes research. By 1990, Research Computing was under the direction of David McCallie, MD and located in the recently expanded John F. Enders Pediatric Research Laboratories.

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Currently, Research Computing provides researchers with access to digital tools and technologies including high-performance computing clusters, virtual machines, PetaByte-scale high-performance storage and cloud platforms. We work with Boston Children’s scientists to develop solutions in support of cutting-edge research ranging from lattice light-sheet microscopy to CryoEM, genomics, and health informatics. For more information, please visit our intranet wiki at http://rcwiki.