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PHD Glossary

  • Bioinformatics: the science of managing and analyzing biological data using advanced computing techniques.
     
  • Biological Materials Repositories: a place where biological materials/specimens are physically stored.
     
  • Biospecimen: also known as biological material this is a general term that applies to any material taken from a person (typically blood or tissue samples).
     
  • Blood Serum: the liquid component of blood without the actual blood cells but containing a protein that makes blood clot (similar to blood plasma).
     
  • Clinical Trial: a type of research study that tests how well new experimental medical treatments or other interventions work in people, designed to test new methods of screening, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of a disease.
     
  • Genetics: the study of the patterns of inheritance of specific attributes; the study of patterns of genes and their relationship to specific traits.
     
  • HIPAA: the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act. This law is the first comprehensive Federal protection for the privacy of personal health information, passed by Congress in 1996, and implemented in April 2003.
     
  • Tissue Samples: a part of an organism used for medical or research testing, for example, a small piece of a tumor, or diseased artery, or a group of cells taken from the skin.
     
  • Personal Health Records: recorded information about a person's medical history.