CTSC:TTIC.012709

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC
'Action Items (details below)

1. All Consortium members are invited to distribute the final version of the XNAT engineer job description to potential candidates.
2. The consortium must decide who will attend the joint IRAT/CTSA meeting in Baltimore (March 29-31)
3. Consortium members are asked to gather information on the dates of the Radiology Department meetings for the next t-con.

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes January 27, 2009

In Attendance (in person):

• Randy Gollub
• Carolyn Zyloney
• Gordon Harris
• Valerie Humblet
• Robert Lenkinski
• Bill Hanlon
• Stephan Voss
• Simon Warfield
• Annick D. Van den Abbeele
• Laura Alice
• Clare Tempany
• Ron Kikinis
• Sarah McMordie

In attendance (by phone)

• Gordon Williams
• Jeff Yapp

1. IRAT/CTSA Joint Workshop March 29-31,2009 in Baltimore

• Several members have been invited by Dan Sullivan, and 6 Consortium members plan to attend the meeting. Because there will be overlapping sessions, it is necessary that have multiple members attending.
• The travel costs for the invited speakers are covered. For the others members there is enough funding from the Catalyst.
• The consortium decided Valerie should also go to the meeting.
• Ron suggested that it is important for a consortium member to give a presentation about the Harvard CTSC IT infrastructure and proposal.
  • Randy and Bill are both willing to give a talk about it. The group also agreed to invite Shawn Murphy to attend, or help draft our IT presentation for the workshop.
  • The picture of what this infrastructure could bring to physicians (e.g. integration of XNAT/i2b2 with the PACs systems) should not be omitted.
• Bob wants someone to represent the MRI group because there is still a lot of controversy on how to acquire data in the MRI community.
  • Stephan Voss volunteered to do it. Randy also suggested that the group invite Karl Helmer to attend, since he is an expert on multi-site, cross-field strength and cross-vendor MR calibration studies.
  • It is important to get information about multi-center trials. There is a lot of money invested to work on these multicenters.
• Valerie will distribute a summary of who is going to the meeting and what they will present or what sessions they plan to attend. The members will then be able to see if there is an area of interest not covered and eventually ask one more member to go to the meeting.

2. XNAT Engineer Position

Hiring an XNAT engineer is a top priority for the Imaging Consortium and the group agreed that a skilled candidate should be hired as soon as possible. Gordon Williams insisted that we must hired someone rapidly to ensure that Catalyst Central will still have the resources to support this position.

• Simon agreed to host the position at Children's Hospital and be the manager.
• Laura and Simon will post it on the Children's Hospital Web site.
• So far 1 application was received and posted on the xythos web site.
• Bill has received a second application and Valerie will post the information on the xythos web site.
• In order to keep the money allowed for the position, Ron suggested hired someone already in place to start the work while the members continue the hiring process.
• The group agreed that hiring a full time employee is preferable to contracting this work to a consultant.

3. Reporting consulting contacts

• Randy asked that any imaging consultations, even informal or verbal, be reported to Valerie with a brief explanation (name of the person seeking the consultation, date the request was received, consortium members who participated in handling the request, topic of the request, and any information on the outcome of the consultation, if available). She will keep track for the Consortium and later transfer the data to Catalyst central.
• Valerie will work on a simple online form to report consults. It could be based on the model used by the genetics group. She will also ask Catalyst Central for some advice on a tracking tool for these consults.
• The group agreed that consortium members should inform investigators seeking informal consultations about the imaging consultation service.

4. Division Heads meetings

• Randy wants to launch the meetings asap. Catalyst Central will help with the design of the slides.
• Members agreed that smaller meetings (ex: oncology, standing meetings with clinicians) are very important.
• Valerie, Bruce or Randy and a site representative will attend the different meetings. Bill should join when it comes to IT meetings.
• Valerie will start to collect data about the smaller meetings at the different sites and ask for our presentation to be added to the schedule.
• Consortium is waiting for Bruce's feedback about his meeting with Zak Kohane regarding IT issues.
• Some extra funding for the XNAT project may become available, Shawn Murphy is working on it.

5. Update profile on Catalyst web site

• The Catalyst website posts a profile on the consortium members based on information available through the Harvard White Pages, Pub Med, and several other sources.
• Bob and Gordon Williams mentioned that many catalyst profiles are not updated. About 60% of the information (publications, ...) are not up to date. Catalyst Central would like to receive this updated data, and is also interested in posting links to the individual's lab website.
• Valerie will help the consortium members to update their profile on the Catalyst web site.
• Bob suggested implementing a research profile that members will update once a year.

6. Imaging IT Proposal

• The Imaging Group will present information on the existing informatics infrastructure and the IT proposal to the Divisions Chiefs and at the Department meetings.
• The Consortium plans to continue working with the Catalyst IT Group and Zak Kohane on the issues involved in the proposal.
• Successful implementation of the proposal involves solving issues regarding the institutional policy, such as HIPAA regulations and the policies regarding transfer of PHI.
• Bruce suggested that the group already begin working with the IT departments to tackle one issue in the proposal. The group agreed that the first issue to be presented should be inter-institutional transfer of data.
  • The difficulty with transferring data between the TIMC and Children's Hospital is a good case example of an informatics policy issue that the group wishes to solve.