Immunogenetics software as a service

Aim The development of a freely available immunogenetic software as a service (SaaS) platform. Making immunogenetic tools available as web applications offers benefits such as: increased accessibility and ease of use for important analytical methods, consistent access to up-to-date software and data, decreased research costs associated with computational analysis, and consistent application of data analysis standards. Methods We employed an Amazon Web Services server to host the tools that comprise our platform. Software scripted in the R language for statistical computing were made available using Shiny-Server and software scripted in other languages were made available using Apache HTTP Server. Results The software currently available include: Bridging ImmunoGenomic Data-Analysis Workflow Gaps (BIGDAWG) for case control association studies; Update NomenCLature (UNCL), which allows a user to bring HLA datasets into compliance with current nomenclature releases; and iHAP beta, which performs population-level haplotype estimation. A JavaScript tool in beta production, HLA Allele Mapmaker (HAM-beta), produces global frequency heat maps from data in the allelefrequencies.net database. These tools can be found at immunogenomics.org/content/software. Conclusions User interfaces for these programs were made to be simple and user-friendly, while keeping all of the original functionality of the underlying software. Providing immunogenetic tools as a SaaS platform promises to make immunogenetic research faster, simpler and more accessible, particularly for users without strong computational backgrounds, and eliminates the need for local installation of software.