CTSC.TTIC.minutes.070808

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC

Action Items (details below)

1. Site representatives need to update their resources, you can do so on our wiki or send info to Ann for assistance
2. Begin collecting educational resources already available to catalog on wiki
3. Annick and Clare to bring back to group draft consulting plan

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes July 8, 2008

In Attendance (in person at the Martinos Imaging Center, Charlestown):

• Stephen Voss, Children's
• Simon Warfield, Children's
• Ron Kikinis, BWH
• Clare Tempany, BWH
• Bill Hanlon, MGH
• Gordon Harris, MGH
• Annick Van den Abbeele, DFCI
• Robert Lenkinski, BIDMC
• Randy Gollub, MGH
• Bruce Rosen, MGH
• Ann Schlesinger, CTSC Navigator

Meeting began with a tour of Martinos imaging facilities and GCRC supported Biomedical Imaging Core unit. Note that this is just a subset of MGH based imaging resources. We are updating our wiki page to include this more comprehensive catalog.

Then we began to gather ideas from group for vision of what we could/should do

• Unanimous agreement that this Consortium envisions itself as an expert consulting body to the CTSC and the affiliated academic medical centers in the domain of medical imaging. Consensus agreement that this group is willing to systematically explore, discuss and then come to agreement on policies for medical imaging related issues that are causing obstacles for clinical translational investigators.
  

Specific examples include:

1. Screening forms/policies for MRI scanning
2. MRI safety training procedures for staff
3. Recommendations for screening prior to injection of gadolinium contrast

• Consensus that it will take some time to come to a clear view of what domains of infrastructure/expertise/etc should be disseminated across our sites and what should be centralized at some or one site. Agreed that there will not be a "one size fits all" solution. Randy and Bruce to gather more information on the level of resources available to the Consortium to guide this decision making.

Updates to topics already underway

1. Consultation Service Update on this expected next week from Annick and Clare.

2. Education Program Randy met with the new CTSC Director of Educational Programming, Dr. Eric Rosenberg (MGH) and the MGH based Clinical Research Education Unit (Dr. Janet Hall, Liz Salomon and staff) on July 3rd. The great news is that this highly experienced team is going to facilitate the CTSC Education programming. They accepted gladly the role we hoped that they would of doing all the logistical support work for our educational offerings. In fact, Dr. Rosenberg offered to work with us as the "test case" for how to structure and deliver CTSC didactics. Their team had very specific, helpful suggestions for how to achieve our goal of disseminating the current state of the art of biomedical imaging capabilities and how to access them to the clinical translational investigators. After hearing the ideas, the Consortium, with all sites in attendance, unanimously agreed to the following plan:

• The first and most important dissemination/training material we will develop will be an introductory education on medical imaging tools and how to use them for clinical translational and/or clinical trials research. The content will include:

1. descriptions of what modalities are available within the CTSC umbrella
2. how to decide what modalities to use
3. what the outcome measures of each mean including the current standards for sensitivity and specificity and sources of variability
4. how to access these facilities within the CTSC
5. future directions including imminently available capabilities within the CTSC

• The format will be Miniseries delivered each week on four consecutive weeks, each lecture 60-90 minutes (final choice has to wait until we finish developing content)
• Live presentations will be offered on both Longwood and MGH campuses either simultaneously or serially
• Suggested time based on highest attendance for busy clinicians is Tuesdays from 3:30 or 4 PM to 5:00 PM
• Electronic capture (audio, video or both) and/or remote streaming is up to the Education group to determine and deliver
• Presentation materials will be turned into self-teaching materials (similar to the NA-MIC tutorial materials) as a collaborative effort between this Consortium group and the Education group.
• Expect to deliver this same content (appropriately updated) at least annually, or more depending on demand

Next steps are to collect didactic materials already available

3. Collaborative response to Harvard wide Technology White Paper

4. Curation of Site resources Show website and get feedback for how to organize

5. Regulatory Issues Lowering barrier to utilization (GAC review? Applications????)

6. Face to face meeting dates

After the meeting, Randy and Ron began training Ann and Gordon on how to use this wiki. To be continued....