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Action Items (details below)

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes November 4, 2008

In Attendance (via phone):

• Randy Gollub
• Carolyn Zyloney
• Jeff Yap
• Bill Hanlon
• Bob Lenkinski
• Clare Tempany
• Annick D. Van den Abbeele

1. Educational Program

• Annick proposed a course on radiation safety, subject safety, and other issues critical for approval from the IRB and other regulatory agencies.
  • The goal is to offer this course in Spring-Summer 2009
  • This course can present safety information and best practices for the acquisition of images within multiple imaging modalities
  • Radiation Safety Officers determine the necessary content of the safety portion of IRB submissions that include imaging
  • One goal of the Imaging Consortium is to develop a standardized language for IRB submissions involving imaging that can be available to Investigators at all institutions within the Harvard CTSC.
  • The Educational Program provides an opportunity to develop or disseminate this standardized language.
  • A key responsibility of The Imaging Liaison will be to collate information from the multiple institutions and develop a standardized language that can be shared throughout the Imaging community

2. Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison Job Position

• Consortium members are invited to propose alternate titles for this job position.

• The Consortium is looking over several promising applications for the position.
  • The Consortium members agreed that communication and interpersonal skills are one of the key criterion by which to choose applicants, but technical expertise is also important.
  • Randy is working on setting up a confidential website where the Consortium members can access materials from the applicants.
  • There was unanimous agreement to postpone interviews until the job posting has been distributed through the RSNA publications and website, and posted on the MGH website. It is believed these sources will attract strong job candidates.
  • Qualified applicants will be invited to interview with the Consortium members in the near future.

• The Consortium is working on delineating tasks for the liaison to perform during the first few months of his/her employment.
  • The Consortium will train the liaison to do triage for the consultation service
  • The Liaison can attend basic educational courses
  • One of the first goals the liaison will be in charge of completing is setting up physiological monitoring systems at all interested sites within the Harvard CTSC.

3. Imaging at Harvard and MIT

• Randy Buckner and John Gabrieli expressed strong support for the CTSC Imaging program.
  • Investigators ask them many questions, which can be directed to the Imaging Consortium's consultation service now.
  • Both sites have requested help in obtaining physiological monitoring equipment for research purposes that is comparable to the physiological monitoring system in use at the Martinos Center at MGH.
  • Representatives from the BIDMC, as well as the other sites within the Consortium, are invited to request a physiological monitoring system if desired.

4. Pilot Grant update

• The CTSC has decided not to hold a second round for Pilot Grant submissions this year due to the large volume of applications during the first round.
• A number of grant applications were developmental not clinical
• Notifications of which projects have been chosen to receive funding will be sent out soon.
• It is not clear if the consultation service will play a role in supporting the pilot grants, but the Consortium is awaiting advise and instruction from CTSC central on this issue.

5. Update from the Informatics Meeting

• Bill Hanlon will attend the November 7th meeting in Chicago
  • Imaging Consortium members are requested to submit their requirements for the Informatics system to Bill
• Bill will speak with Karl Helmer, who works with the BIRN coordinating center
• The Informatics meeting was held at Harvard's Countway Library directly following the Imaging Group meeting.
  • The representatives from the Imaging Group together with Shawn Murphy presented the XNAT proposal to the Informatics group.
  • There was uniform positive response to the proposal from the Informatics group
  • They were supportive of adding medical imaging data to the data types that can be hadled through i2b2
  • However, the group outlined the problems that may arise due to the accessing of imaging data in PACs systems and the difficulty of working with medical imaging meta-data
  • The XNAT software has been able to deal with these issues effectively.
• The Imaging and Informatics Groups will present the proposal to Harvard CTSC Central and the heads of informatics at each institution within this CTSC
  • Shawn Murphy and Diane Keogh from Partners Research Computing will make the presentation to the Head of Partners Computing
  • Bill from BIDMC will make a presentation to Jim Murray, the Director of Clinical ___.
  • The BIDMC is not set up for interfacing with the PACs systems.
  • Zak Kohane will share this proposal with the heads of the CTSC.
  • This proposal is also being forwarded to the IT committee
• The proposal calls for CTSC Central to hire an engineer to integrate XNAT and i2b2.
• Randy will contact Suzanne Churchill, the director of i2b2, to obtain a list of all the CTSC sites that are using i2b2 currently
• Dan Marcus is meeting with the National CTSC Imaging Working Group, which is planning on submitting a NIBIB grant for the national Informatics effort. The Harvard CTSC Imaging Group may want to consider submitting a companion grant or participating in this grant submission.
• Jeff Yap raised the question of transferring information from the clinical data to the Imaging data fields, because currently a large portion of the data must be manually entered. There may be issues of regulatory compliance here and this issue may require multiple solutions.

6. Consultation Page Update

• Biostatistics and Genetics have made changes to their pages
• CTSC Catalyst has created a mock up of the Imaging page.
• Final edits to the page have been suggested and the page will go live on the Catalyst website soon.