Goal: To provide the best expertise for peer review of NIH applications—without reviewers leaving their home base—in a user-friendly, time-effective, and cost-effective means as an addition to face-to-face meetings. It is expected that reviewers, who would not consent to coming to Washington due to professional or family considerations and time constraints, would review if they did not have to travel. In the pilot phase, the goal is to test feasibility, to improve the process and techniques, to train SROs and reviewers, and to perfect the protocols to meet the specific needs of video review. The long-term goal is to expand the use of video enhanced discussion (VED) to over 100 review meetings per year, to develop a hybrid meeting format, which combines VED with face-to-face meetings, and to reduce the overall cost of a face to face meeting.   

Expected Benefits: Use of VED as an alternative review format should—

·         Improve the quality and maintain CSR core values by recruiting the best reviewers and hard-to-get reviewers who otherwise can not travel to a face-to-face meeting;

·         Provide more involvement in a virtual face-to-face meeting environment, rather than a simple teleconference, while the participants stay in their familiar office or home environment;

·         Take advantage of an informative meeting setting with audio, video, real-time chatting, PowerPoint and additional visual enhancement;

·         Eliminate travel stress and save time for reviewers, program officers and SRA; reducing the time for releasing scores and allowing SROs to start working on summary statement earlier; and

·         Reduce costs.

Status: Over 80 review meetings have been successfully conducted since the initial tests in May 2006 council. CSR and the NIH Center for Information Technology have been working together to better understand, analyze and improve the technology and processes. The VED Steering Committee was inaugurated with strong team members onboard. New and improved workflow protocols and supporting procedures are produced and being implemented in  current and future review rounds. An SRO workshop has been successfully conducted.

Schedule for Implementation: We will be exploring and testing the proposed procedural modifications to enhance the technical support capacity. The improvements will allow CSR’s Technical Services Branch to support a total of 30+ VED meetings each round with half of the support staff as initially planned. Web pages and videos for training the CSR staff and reviewers will be amended. Plans for bringing ESAs to assist the conduct and support VED meetings and ESA training will be worked out. With continuous improvement and success, the VED approach should be a viable option for SROs to recruit the best possible reviewers and conduct real-time, virtual face-to-face meetings, with sizable number of applications reviewed at one time.