Purdue’s Box research storage service a key component of Eli Lilly collaboration

Researchers participating in Purdue’s five-year, $52 million life sciences collaboration with Eli Lilly & Co. are relying on Purdue’s instance of Box.com to help securely store and share their regulated health data.

The Lilly collaboration was a driving force behind Purdue’s agreement with Box, a cloud storage and collaboration service. The collaboration with Lilly began with a focus on improving delivery of injectable medicines and developing predictive models for clinical success to reduce the risk of investing in drug development.

“We were looking for ways to keep everything confidential and secure, and yet allow Lilly to share information with us in a way they’re comfortable with,” says Kaethe Beck, director of operations, life sciences, for the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and Partnerships. She manages the Purdue-Lilly collaboration.

Box was already used at Lilly, which made it a natural fit for the project.

The faculty involved in the Lilly collaboration use Purdue’s instance of Box exclusively for data storage and sharing, which has allowed them to work collaboratively while satisfying Lilly’s stringent information security protocols.

“Box helps facilitate that collaboration in a really easy, user-friendly way,” says Beck.

Purdue’s instance of Box is compliant with regulations governing the storage of health data, including HIPAA and HITECH. Researchers who are interested in using Box for secure data storage will need to work with ITaP Research Computing for proper security set up and training. For more information or help getting started, email rcac-help@purdue.edu.

For non-regulated research, PIs may request a Box Research Lab Folder for their group’s use. Data within a research lab folder remains associated with the lab rather than any one individual. As with REED folders, PIs may directly manage access to their lab’s folder. Research lab folders are an ideal complement to other research storage services, and are perfect for when easy sharing and collaboration on documents are required.

For individual storage, any Purdue faculty or staff member and students can log in with their Purdue username and BoilerKey to create an account at purdue.box.com. A folder called “Getting Started with Box” is provided to help users learn how to use the Box service. Users must comply with University data handling guidelines and should not upload University sensitive or restricted data to their individual Box account.

Writer:  Adrienne Miller, science and technology writer, Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP), 765-496-8204, mill2027@purdue.edu

Last updated: June 19, 2019