PCRC Services

Clinical Core

The PCRC Clinical Core includes research nursing and investigational pharmacy services.

Nursing Services

The PCRC research nursing staff is comprised of skilled pediatric and neonatal registered nurses to assist principal investigators in the coordination and performance of scatterbed and outpatient studies.

Services include:

• Facilitating protocol implementing by reviewing for feasibility
• Coordination of protocol implementation
• Screening and identification of eligible subjects
• Administration of research interventions
• Assistance with procedures and specimen collection
• Data collection
• Research record management

For additional information, please contact Dawn Bruton, Assistant Director of Nursing, 727-767-4617.

Investigational Pharmacy

The Investigational Pharmacy was established to provide support for clinical drug research at All Children’s Hospital, and is located within the Inpatient Pharmacy. Services include the receiving, storing, dispensing and monitoring of investigational drugs to insure that all drug studies are conducted safely and in compliance with federal, state, JCAHO and IRB regulations. The Investigational Pharmacist will work directly with the investigator to facilitate accurate accountability of investigational drug products.

Laboratory Cores

Sample Processing and Specimen Repository

The Sample Processing Laboratory and Specimen Repository Core Laboratories are located in approximately 1000 square feet of space on the fourth floor of the USF/ACH Children's Research Institute (CRI), in close proximity to the outpatient and inpatient services of the hospital. The necessary equipment for rapid specimen processing and storage, including centrifuges and biological safety cabinets are available. The Laboratory houses two biological safety cabinets, a floor model swinging bucket centrifuge, a cell analyzer, inverted microscope, standard microscope, refrigerator and freezer for storage of media and reagents, and a SANYO Model MCO-36AIC upright dual incubator for cell culture. An adjacent room houses four –85º Upright Freezers with CO2 backup, alarm, and long term cryopreservation system containing a -190º C liquid Nitrogen Storage tank capable of storing up to 36,000 individual samples. A third component of the laboratory, designed for the separation of the cellular components of human blood and assessments of cellular function, contains an Milyenyl Biotech Automax cell separator and ELISA plate reader and washer.

Biological Safety Level 3 Laboratory

The Biological Safety Level 3 Laboratory (BSL-3) is also located on the fourth floor of the CRI and meets current Centers for Disease Control guidelines. This space consists of approximately 400 square feet with an adjacent preparation room. It is equipped with air-flow systems for biological containment, and a biological safety seal entrance way, a dual access Autoclave/Sterilizer designed specifically for a BSL-3 laboratory, a bench top refrigerated centrifuge, two biological safety cabinets, a -85°C upright freezer with CO₂ backup, a liquid nitrogen storage system,  a double-bank incubator, an inverted microscope with digital camera, a microfuge, and PC computer system.

Genetics Core

Located on the third floor of the CRI, this core provides high throughput genetic sequencing technology for automatic high resolution DNA sequencing.  The equipment includes: an Applied Biosytems Gene Sequencing System 3730 with 48 Capillary capacity; and a CHEF Mapper XA Chiller System for pulsed field gel electrophoresis.

Informatics Core

The Informatics Core provides access to hardware, software and data management services for investigators who are conducting research under approved PCRC protocols. The Core offers a secure infrastructure for data collection, storage and retrieval, backup and manipulation. The PCRC servers are available on the ACH campus network, which facilitates protected access, data storage and daily backups. The Informatics Core provides resources to:

• Provide analysis and planning of protocol informatics needs.
• Database design and implementation.
• Data translation services.
• Store, link, and merge clinical and outcomes data for patients enrolled in PCRC studies as well as national data sets (clinical and administrative) relevant to research on pediatric outcomes and quality (consistent with all applicable HIPPA regulations).

Several computers and peripherals located in the PCRC Administrative Office are available to investigators including workstations, laptops, and color and black/white laser printers. For more information, please contact Sandy Wismer, 727-767-4813.

Outcomes Core

The research emphasis of the Outcomes and Health Policy Core is on the quality, safety and outcomes of hospital care for children and adolescents. The primary research aims include exploring the relationship between the volume and outcomes of identified diseases or procedures; examining the relationship between policy and organizational characteristics and child health outcomes; and investigating the quality and outcome of care in children with chronic conditions and special health care needs. The majority of research is conducted using secondary analysis of large state level and national level administrative databases.

To facilitate outcomes and policy research, the PCRC has a number of large state and national level administrative databases which can be used for secondary data analysis.

These resources include:

Healthcare Costs and Utilization Project Data Set (HCUP) databases:

• National Inpatient Sample
• State Inpatient Data
• State Ambulatory Data
• Kids Inpatient Data
• American Hospital Association Annual Survey, 1996-2001, 2002, 2003, 2004
• 2003 Bureau of Health Professionals’ Area Resource File

HCUP is a family of healthcare databases and related software tools and products that enable research on a broad range of issues, including cost and quality of health services, medical practice patterns, access to health care programs, and outcome of treatment at the national, State, and local market levels. It is a national information resource of discharge-level health care data, and includes the largest collection of longitudinal hospital care data in the United States, with all-payer, discharge-level information beginning in 1988.Research investigators requesting access to these databases will be required to complete the HCUP Data Use Agreement Training and sign a Data Use Agreement relevant to the dataset. A limited dataset will be generated and made available.