CTSC:TTIC.090908

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC
Action Items (details below)

1. Post a draft of the consultation service web-page on the CTSC wiki (Randy Gollub)
2. Create a draft of job descriptions (Randy)
3. Formulate a list of the IT services needed at your site (everybody)

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes September 9, 2008

In Attendance (in person):

• Gordon Williams
• Bill Hanlon
• Laura Alice
• Steven Voss
• Randy Gollub
• Clare Tempany
• Ann Schlesinger
• Zeke Bernstein-Hanley
• Bruce Rosen
• Carolyn Zyloney
• Gordon Harris

1. Consultation Service
The Imaging Consortium unanimously agreed to use the Genetics and Biostatistics consultation service web-pages on the Harvard Catalyst website as a model. The consulting web page will include:

• key contacts within the consultation service
• the consultation services that are and are not provided
• an explanation of who is eligible to utilize these services
• a form for requesting consulting services

The Imaging group's consultation web-page will be posted on the Harvard Catalyst website on October 15th. There was universal agreement among the Imaging Consortium that requests for consultation services should be submitted online via a web-based form and should be linked to an RSS feed to notify Imaging Consortium members of new consultation requests. The web-based system will allow for tracking of requests and the time required to respond to those requests as well as allow for the collection of outcome metrics. This idea of a web-based submission of requests will be proposed to Genetics and Biostatistics and discussed with the the CTSC IT team, including Douglas MacFadden.The Consortium's individual members will serve as consultants and will use the weekly teleconference to discuss consultation requests and train a new consultation triage person. Randy Gollub volunteered to serve as the triage consultant until the Imaging Consortium can hire a triage person. The consortium agreed that the consulting service will focus on domains in which the consortium currently possesses expertise in, including CT, MRI, and PET. However, the consortium will consider extending the consulting service to additional domains on demand. Randy Gollub has approached Ellen Grant, who has agreed to provide some minimal but helpful assistance with pediatric neuroimaging consultations.

2. Image Data Management and Medical Imaging Informatics
Sharing imaging data between sites is difficult due to HIPAA regulations and security. For each study that requires sharing data between institutions, a policy must be developed to regulate it. The consortium does not plan on developing a central archive of imaging data. Based on the systems in use by Bill Hanlon, Gordon Harris, and the Dana Farber Cancer Center's Tumormetrics Core, it seems possible to develop a system to work with each institutions XNAT instance to facilitate the transfer of data. The group acknowledges that there is still a great deal of work that needs to be done but expresses enthusiasm in continuing the effort to support multi-site clinical imaging studies

3. Job positions to be created and filled

• Imaging Information and Analysis Liaison/Imaging Navigator/Triage Consultant:

Potential job responsibilities include managing the consultation service, working with the IT team, teaching investigators to use XNAT resources, educating investigators, providing tutorials and training for image analysis, working with the CTSC Research Navigators, and serving as the imaging consortium's go-to person. Candidates should possess a PhD with expertise in neuroimaging research. The qualities desired in a candidate may be adapted from the CTSC Research Navigator job description.

• XNAT engineers

There is need to hire two skilled computer scientists to work collaboratively on image data bioinformatics. Our proposal is that one will be hired by CTSC IT central and supervised by Shawn Murphy and Zak Kohane and their team and will work with the Imaging Consortium on deploying an XNAT data management system at each i2b2 Hive. The second XNAT engineer will work collaboratively with the first so that the XNAT software can be customized to support each individual clinical translational scientist using it. The two XNAT engineers will work collabortativly with Bill Hanlon and his team to build a system to facilitate the transfer of clinical imaging data from each institution into their respective XNAT instance and will work to facilitate the transfer of data between XNAT instances across institutions.