Curvita™ | SciMed Solutions, Inc.

FAQs

What is Curvita™ Profile Manager?
Curvita™ Profile Manager is designed to work as a single system of record and a comprehensive integrated repository for managing or presenting data on all aspects of the professional careers of your faculty and students.

Why was Curvita™ Profile Manager developed as a product?
Curvita™ Profile Manager was developed as a software solution for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to solve a problem found at many universities where data was being kept in separate silos without the ability to link the data together to make it more useful. By making data available in a single site, Curvita™ is helping to eliminate the needless repetition by staff of maintaining profile data at numerous campus websites and databases.

What kind of information can you store in Curvita™ Profile Manager?
Beyond the storing of Basic CV information, Curvita™ Profile Manager helps manage, store and present Departmental and Program Affiliations, Education, Employment, Publications, Research Projects, Student Advisees, Intellectual Property, Courses Taught, Public Service, Funding Sources, Degrees Awarded and any other data you wish to store. By interfacing these silos of data held in different university databases with Curvita Profile Manager, you can benefit more quickly from having all of your CV data in one central repository.

What kind of interfaces can you accomplish with our existing systems with Curvita™?
Curvita™ Profile Manager can interface with these silos of information using XML Web APIs, Direct Database Connections to any SQL Data Source, automatic transfer of tabular data files using File Transfer Protocol, or any customized import that needs to be created to meet your needs. And, if you already have systems in place to store or track some of these activities, Curvita™ Profile Manager can interface with these systems daily or weekly by pulling, pushing or synchronizing data so that changes made in one system are visible in both.

What if we already have systems of record storing some of the data types you store in Curvita™?
You can also set up Curvita™ so that it only acts as a collector of data changes made at other sites while still retaining all of the reporting and analysis value with multiple types of data being made available at Curvita™ Profile Manager. Curvita™ Profile Manager can be set up to automatically import data from other campus systems. If you already have a database of all faculty members, we can pull that information into Curvita™. If you have a database compiling all research support, we can interface that information into Curvita™ as well.

What kind of reporting can be accomplished with Curvita™ Profile Manager?
Curvita™ Profile Manager can generate individual CVs and Biographical Sketches, administrative reports, marketing reports and data tables for grant submissions.

What other ways can you input data into Curvita™ Profile Manager?
We have created Excel templates in Curvita™ Profile Manager with Tabs that correspond with the profile categories available in Curvita™ to help you rapidly import CV data.

How do I enter bibliography data into my CV profile in Curvita™ Profile Manager?
In Curvita™, you have the ability to search publications databases for articles you would like to associate with a profile. Curvita™ has access to several databases such as Pubmed, ISI and CINAHL. There are other databases available for inclusion as well. Finally, if you are already managing your publications in another program such as EndNote, you can utilize our Excel template to bring these publications into your Curvita™ profile.

What kind of formats are available in Curvita™ Profile Manager to export my CV?
You have the ability to export CVs back into Word or PDF format for use elsewhere. There are many options for the layout of these documents, including personal CV’s, National Institute of Health Biographical sketches, National Science Foundation Biographical sketches, and other standard formats in use at your institution. Publications listed in your Biosketch can also be presented in many different citation formats.

Can I assign maintenance of individual or department profiles to someone else?
Curvita™ Profile Manager gives you the ability to assign different levels of editing privileges to members of your staff. You can either retain final approval, or grant final approval to a trusted staff member.

What is your NIH Training Grant Writer Module in Curvita™?
We all know that submitting proposals for NIH Training Grants is a tremendous undertaking. Gathering updated CV and demographic information for participating faculty and students is difficult and takes a tremendous amount of time and resources to tabulate the results for the many tables required.

Curvita™’s NIH Training Grant Writer Module uses the CV data already stored in Curvita™ and automatically walks you through the steps required to create your training grant tables. Instead of dedicating weeks or months to submitting one Training Grant application, Curvita™ streamlines this process so that you can go after more training grants and increase your chances of success. Curvita™’s NIH Training Grant Writer Module is built around a single dashboard page. This dashboard walks you through a step by step process to create the grant tables and provides a visual indicator of your progress. While completing each task shown on the dashboard, you can drill down into an individual’s data and determine how that data may affect the success of the grant submission you are working on.

After completing the first few tasks, you can generate the grant application tables at any time. If you have not completed all of the tasks, the tables will only include the data that you have reviewed. You can then fill in the empty portions of the tables with any information that you like. When you do complete all of the tasks on the Dashboard, then Curvita™’s NIH Training Grant Writer Module will populate all of the tables automatically.

If you need to edit the data further for a particular grant submission, the Grant Application Tables can be modified using the buttons viewable on each row and each cell. You can add rows, change captions, update data points, and allow Curvita™ to recalculate your totals. You also have the ability to add footnotes at the bottom of each Table.

The completed NIH Training Grant Tables can be exported as Word or PDF documents. Finally, if you would like to keep a record of your finalized grant submission with all of the accompanying material, Word, PDF, or scanned documents can be uploaded to Curvita™ and associated with this Grant Application submission for long-term storage and access.

What else can you use the Curvita™ NIH Training Grant Writer Module For?
You can also use Curvita™ and our NIH Training Grant Writer Module to assemble Curriculum Vitae data for other types of Research Grant proposals. At Curvita™, we are happy to work with you to meet your needs.

What Operating System does Curvita™ Profile Manager Run On?
Server OS: Windows Server 2003

What is the underlying web server and database used?
Web server: Apache 2
Database: MySQL

What programming language was used to write Curvita™ Profile Manager?
Coded in: Ruby on Rails

What options do we have for installing Curvita™ Profile Manager at our institution?

We can install Curvita™ Profile Server at your IT center on a Windows 2003 Server of your choosing
You can subscribe to Curvita™ and we will host your data on a centralized server

What are the server requirements needed to operate Curvita™ Profile Manager?
Minimum server requirements differ based on the size of your institution, number of users, and the amount of data you plan on interfacing with Curvita.

How much does Curvita™ Profile Manager Cost?
There are too many elements that need to be determined prior to providing a price quote to purchase Curvita™ Profile Manager. We invite you to contact us to schedule a demo of the software and to talk about what goals you are trying to accomplish. After that meeting we can quickly provide a quotation for you as well as options for software support.

About Us
Curvita™ Profile Manager is being developed and marketed as a partnership between SciMed Solutions and Coffey Medical.

Originally an arm of Durham, NC-based IT support company Net Friends, SciMed Solutions began providing custom application development in 2003, SciMed Solutions has expanded from a sole focus on custom Web-based application development projects and Web site development to also include several commercial products, focusing primarily in the clinical, educational and research communities.

Coffey Medical, Inc was founded in 1991 to distribute new technology in the fields of medical devices and IT oriented products. Over the years, Coffey Medical has been involved in developing and selling numerous new products.