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Action Items (details below)

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes November 25, 2008

In Attendance (via phone):

• Randy Gollub
• Carolyn Zyloney
• Jeff Yap
• Bill Hanlon
• Gordon Harris
• Gordon Williams
• Clare Tempany
• Annick D. Van den Abbeele
• Laura Alice

1. Educational Program

• The Imaging Consortium will set dates and times for the upcoming educational seminars at an upcoming meeting.
  • In order to secure a room at BWH and MGH, these educational meetings must be booked well in advance.
  • The Slicer presentation held in Fall 2008 had a limited capacity of 20-40 seats, and these seats filled quickly. It is hoped that there will be equally strong demand for the upcoming educational seminars

2. Imaging Information and Acquisition Liaison Job Position

• The job description has been circulated through several outlets:
  • MGH has been asked to post the position on the Partners careers site
  • An email with the job description was sent to the Martinos Center community via email.
  • An ad for the position was posted on the RSNA web site starting in mid-November. It will be posted there for a month.
  • The ad has also been posted on numerous career websites.
  • The ad will be featured in the December issue of Radiology (an RSNA publication).
  • A short description of the position will be posted on a monitor at the Career Connection booth at the RSNA Conference in December.
• Three promising candidates have been invited in for interviews with several members of the consortium.
  • The candidates have been instructed to contact the interviewers and set up appointments.
  • Several consortium members have confirmed that all three candidates have contacted them.
  • Interviews will continue through the next few weeks.

3. Neuroinformatics

• While the goals of the National CTSC Imaging Informatics working group are complementary to the goals of the Harvard CTSC Imaging Group, the national group has a different set of strategic goals than the Consortium.
  • The time line over which the national goals will be carried out is unclear.
  • The Imaging Consortium unanimously agreed to continue with our plan to connect the XNAT instances at each of the institutions within the Harvard CTSC.
  • After this first step of connecting the Harvard institutions is complete, the Harvard CTSC Imaging Group will work to ensure that our system is interoperable with the national goals and systems.
• Randy met with Shawn Murphy from Partners IT.

• 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.