As science pushes boundaries, technology races to keep pace, transforming how we understand, diagnose and treat disease. At the University of Colorado Anschutz (CU Anschutz), this technology includes advanced datasets and software tools that can help researchers and clinicians personalize care and improve patient outcomes. Researchers at the CU Anschutz Department of Biomedical Informatics (DBMI) are leading the charge by developing a variety of technologies—ranging from datasets of the human genome and microbiome to tools that help review electronic health records (EHR) and even improve the outcomes of sepsis.
“Pediatric sepsis is a huge concern, killing more than 3 million children each year worldwide. When our team started to develop the Phoenix Criteria, it was important to me that other data analysts didn’t end up in the same situation I was in, re-implementing organ dysfunction criteria,” says Peter DeWitt, PhD, assistant research professor of biomedical informatics at the CU Anschutz School of Medicine. “I wanted them to just be able to use this piece of software. The software eliminates problems of researchers re-implementing something over and over again—copying code from one place to another. It assures it’s already done for them.”
DeWitt’s R package and Python module, phoenix, supports researchers in identifying pediatric sepsis according to organ dysfunction–based criteria. Although the tool was started to support DeWitt’s own research, he realized that it could be leveraged by other researchers, developers, and data analysts alike. So, DeWitt packaged his code and made it available for people across the globe.
DeWitt is not the only researcher or developer who has experienced this phenomenon, though. Biomedical discoveries are driven by software. But too often innovative tools remain hidden—buried in papers and local repositories, only known about by a handful of researchers. Yet many of these tools can be leveraged by others working with data. This is why DBMI developed the Wall of Software, a centralized site of open-source tools designed to make discovery easier and collaboration more powerful.
The Wall of Software originally began as an idea from Casey Greene, PhD, founding chair of DBMI. Greene wanted to create a visual way to organize and recognize the wide range of software tools being developed by researchers and developers in the department.
Originally imagined as a type of “software registry,” the concept evolved into a virtual ‘wall’ filled with hexagon graphics—with each hexagon representing a different tool. The hexagon design was inspired by hexbin graphics, a data visualization approach that allows shapes to fit together neatly.
The wall launched in 2023 with just eight tools. Since then, it has grown to showcase 24 projects created at or in collaboration with DBMI.
The Wall of Software is maintained by DBMI software engineers Faisal Alquaddoomi, Dave Bunten, Vince Rubinetti and David Mayer. We sat down with the software engineering team to learn more about the wall and the tools within it.