CTSC:TTIC.010609

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC
Action Items (details below)

1. All Consortium members are invited to make edits to the XNAT engineer job descriptionby Friday January 9th. Carolyn will send the polished version in an email shortly. Group members are asked to circulate the job position to potential candidates and their institutions HR department.
2. Look over the slides for the CTSC Imaging presentation to the Divisions Heads meetings (circulated via email and discussed at the next t-con).

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes January 6, 2009

In Attendance (via phone):

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

1. PCIR reviews of protocols including an imaging component - not discussed on call this written report is from Randy and is open for comment. I will bring it up on our next call

• In December, the Consortium discussed the PCIR reviews of protocols including an imaging component and when the group should start fulfilling the role of reviewer for the PCIR. The Consortium agreed to offer to begin this role immediately.
• Towards this goal Randy spoke with Anne Klibanski and David Nathan regarding the Imaging Consortium's offer to immediately begin the role as the imaging review arm of the PCIR.
• Anne provided the following response to our offer:
  • The process of setting up the new review committee for PCIR access has been a lengthy one.
    Where is stands now is that the committee members are named- invitations will be going out in January and Jules Dienstag is the overall Chair. Review documents & forms are finalized.
  • Regulatory has given the OK as to sharing of protocols across institutions and all reviews will be asked to sign a conflict of interest form.
  • We are waiting on selection of the final vendor for the review based application- there are 2 finalists and meetings are taking place this week to make the final edition. Bioinformatics under Doug McFadden and Zak have put considerable resources towards this. As you know- all imaging protocols will be reviewed by the imaging group.
  • The benefit will be an expanded pool of qualified reviewers and an end to the perpetual quest for reviews in an area.
  • Michelle Beck at BI is the AD coordinating the process.
  • The bottom line for us in the Imaging Consortium is that for now- if your site has an imaging protocol for Catalyst review within that you want to use our Consortium to review on an ad hoc basis until this is up and running that's fine. But we have to wait until the overall PCIR review process is ready before formalizing this. They hope to roll this out within a few months. I (Randy) have one protocol that I will be reviewing in the next week and I will post the materials for this group to review and use as a focus to develop our own ideas for how to do these reviews.

2. Update on the Imaging Liaison position

• Dr. Valerie Humblet will be starting her duties as the Imaging Liaison soon.
  • The HR department at the BIDMC is in the process of setting Valerie up as an employee. Her start date is imminent.
  • Bob has arranged an office and will help her acquire a computer.

• Valerie will be visiting each institution over the next few weeks to get to know the members of the consortium better. The tentative schedule for these visits is:
  • Tuesday January 13th - Valerie will meet with Randy and Carolyn at MGH Charlestown Navy Yard for the 8:30 t-con.
  • Tuesday January 20th - Valerie will go to the TIMC (25 New Chardon St) to meet with Bill Hanlon and Gordon Harris for the 8:30 t-con.
  • A face to face meeting for the group at Children's Hospital is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday January 27th.
  • Tuesday February 3rd- Valerie will visit Jeff Yap at Dana Farber Cancer Institute
  • Tuesday Februaru 10th- Valerie will visit Clare at BWH

• The Group previously discussed changing the title of the Imaging Liaison position. Valerie has been invited to come up with a different name for her position.

3. Progress Report Update

• Randy will send the Progress Report to Gordon Williams by the end of this week.

4. XNAT Engineer Job Description

• The Consortium agreed that the XNAT Engineer position should be posted soon.
  • Consortium members were invited to make any edits to the XNAT engineer job description by Friday January 9th.

• Randy and Carolyn will circulate the position for posting by the end of this week.
  • Consortium members are invited to suggest possible candidates for the position and circulate the job description to any potential candidates and their respective HR departments
  • Randy met with Carol Martin, the CTSC Central Diversity Chair, who has agreed to help recruit diverse and qualified candidates for the position.

• Since the position requires technical knowledge and skills related to the XNAT interface, the Imaging Consortium agreed to invite several experts in bioimaging informatics to help conduct interviews for the position or to suggest possible candidates. Randy will speak with Shawn Murphy, Dan Marcus, Ron Kikinis, and Gabrieli to see if they are interested in working with the Imaging Consortium to find a qualified XNAT Engineer.

• Randy Buckner is head of the Harvard Neuroimaging Informatics effort. Gabrieli has been working with Dr. Buckner for several years to make disseminate XNAT and make a user-friendly virtual XNAT interface. Gabrieli possesses a great deal of knowledge about XNAT.
  • The Consortium agreed to invite Gabrieli to help find a skilled XNAT Engineer and is considering inviting him to work as a consultant on the CTSC Informatics efforts.

• The Harvard CTSC is looking into potential funding sources to support the XNAT proposal.
  • Shawn Murphy will submit a grant proposal to NIBIB to provide support for the XNAT proposal. NIBIB currently does work on i2b2. The grant proposal will likely include a plan to develop XNAT at Harvard and then disseminate it to one to two other sites, such as Washington University in St. Louis.
  • The CTSC can also apply for funding from the BIRN project.
  • Since the XNAT proposal includes a plan for integrating the Slicer viewing tool, NAMIC may be able to provide support for the proposal.

5. Consultation Service

• Randy met with the designers of the web based consultation request service.
  • Web based consultation requests will go live on January 15th. It be modeled after the word/pdf consultation request form that is already posted on the Catalyst Imaging site and after the bio-statistics web based request service, which is already live.
  • The consultation requests will be linked to an excel spreadsheet that was developed by the biostatistics group. The spreadsheet will record data such as the date of the consultation requests and will help track each request.

• Randy met with the CTSC Central Evaluation team.
  • The Evaluation Team will work with the Imaging Group to evaluate the effectiveness of the Imaging Consultation Service.
  • Consortium members are invited to suggest ideas for evaluating consultations. Randy and Valerie will meet with the Evaluation Team in the next few weeks to work on the evaluation plan.
  • The Genetics and Biostatistics groups will also work with the Evaluation Team.

• Updates on the effectiveness of the CTSC Imaging Consultation Service, with supporting data, will be reported in the Harvard CTSC Progress Reports. The first Progress Report is due soon.

• The Imaging Consortium plans on meeting with the individual departments at each hospital to advertise the consultation service.
  • The Consortium agreed that one of the first priorities is to make presentations to the Radiology Departments and other departments with Imaging expertise. During these meetings, the Imaging Liaison will describe the goals of the consultation service and look for volunteers who would like to be put on a list of potential consultants or collaborators to help respond to consultation requests.
  • The Consortium will also arrange meetings with the other departments at each institution (e.g medicine, surgery, pediatrics) to inform them of the services available through the Imaging consultation service. Many consultation requests will likely come from investigators within these departments.
  • The Consortium will edit the PowerPoint presentation at next Tuesday's t-con so that it is ready for these meetings. Presentations will include a 10 minute slide show and time for questions at the end.
  • The presentations will be given at the regular monthly Department administrative meetings. Consortium members are asked to contact the Radiology Departments at their institution so that these presentations can be given starting at the end of January.
• Valerie will give the presentations. Randy or Bruce and a consortium member from that site will be present at each presentation.

6. Institutional representatives in CTSC Central

• The Harvard Catalyst intranetincludes lists of the members of the various CTSC committees.
  • The logon name and password will be circulated via email.

Instututional Representatives:

Sites	Representative
BWH	Elliott Antman
DFCI	David Frank
BIDMC	Steve Freedman
MIT	John Gabrieli
BC	Susan Gennaro
Joslin	George King
DFCI	Lee Nadler
Partners	David Nathan
Childrens Hospital	Ellis Neufeld
BIDMC	Jeff Saffitz
Forsyth	Phil Stashenko
Harvard	Laura Weisel