Breaking Down Silos, Building Efficiency at UCSF

More than 200 faculty members at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), worked together to develop the university’s CTSA proposal, suggesting that the NIH program fostered a spirit of collaboration even before the awards were distributed. Much of the UCSF Clinical and Translational Science Institute’s (CTSI’s) subsequent work was a great deal easier—and better—because of the goodwill and spirit of partnership generated through the exercise of writing the grant proposal. The first lesson, then, from UCSF’s experience is that process matters. With the strong leadership of the principal investigator, Mike McCune, CTSI’s most significant achievements benefit from this insight.

For example, staff in the Translational Technology and Resources program realized they faced many of the same challenges as other programs across the campus in setting up a research core. To address this situation, CTSI created a process to connect core managers across the university. This network of peers provided detailed information about each core, and these data populated a widely used “cores search” tool rolled out by CTSI’s Virtual Home initiative. Leadership at UCSF recognized this grassroots approach as a move in the right direction, and it has sparked conversations and planning on how the university might better facilitate more efficient and coordinated core management.

In a similar spirit and with equally high impact, CTSI catalyzed the development of a single intramural funding organization. At UCSF, as at many other universities, faculty seeking intramural funding sources looked to Web pages, Google results, and conversations with mentors or colleagues. Faculty who were well connected or had well-informed mentors were much better able to discover opportunities than those with fewer connections. In addition, the campus hosted many different intramural funding entities. Establishing and maintaining review committees for all of them posed a great challenge, with many faculty members being asked to serve on multiple committees.

When the members of CTSI’s pilot funding program got together to assess how to improve their own funding process, they soon came to a bigger question: How can CTSI improve the intramural funding process across campus? Quickly, CTSI formed an umbrella organization, the Resource Allocation Program (RAP), to provide a single Web site for information on funding opportunities and uniform proposal deadlines, application format, and review process. Many intramural funding entities at UCSF now use RAP, which employs NIH-like standing review committees and an NIH Council–like process of selecting the most highly scored proposals for funding. The goal is for RAP to become the “one-stop shop” for intramural funding for faculty, seamlessly integrating all funding groups across campus.

These two achievements serve as examples of the transformative work UCSF’s CTSI has achieved. Building on the foundation of these initial successes, CTSI is now working on streamlining and making more efficient a variety of university domains, working closely with UCSF senior leadership. Noticeable successes, as in the above two cases, have paved the way for CTSI to accomplish larger initiatives with increasing impact on the UCSF research community.

Informatics Key Function Committee Maps Out Its Future

Prior to the CTSA Consortium Steering Committee’s (CCSC’s) strategic planning process, the Informatics Key Function Committee (IKFC) began a process to determine the priorities of the IKFC. Taking an inclusive, wide-ranging approach, suggestions from all members were collected and then grouped into 12 broad topic areas. Each voting member of the CTSA IKFC was asked to rate each topic according to five criteria:

• Potential to be transformative nationally                             
• Member site’s ability to actively collaborate on this project
• Member site’s desire to actively collaborate on this project
• Overall priority to member site of this topic
• Overall priority for focus by national CTSA activities

Based on the results, more specific projects were developed in the three highest rated areas of data sharing, national inventory of resources, and informatics education. These three projects were then ranked using the same five criteria. 

1. Data sharing: Identify a framework to enable sharing of anonymous, summarized, or meta data across CTSA institutions.
2. Resource inventory: Create a Web-accessible portal and searchable inventory of informatics resources; design portal so other KFCs can include their searchable resource inventories.
3. Education: Develop shared teaching modules to address the identified informatics core competencies for clinical and translational scientists. 

All were highly rated by most members, and the committee, at its face-to-face meeting in October, voted to move forward with all three priority projects. It was also noted that these priority projects mapped very closely to the priorities determined by the CTSA Consortium Steering Committee during its strategic planning process. Accordingly, the IKFC recommended to the CTSA Consortium Executive Committee that these three projects be incorporated into the action items of the strategic planning process. In addition, the IKFC committed to repeating the informatics prioritization process annually in order to report to the CTSA Consortium Committee its perspective on the informatics priorities for the coming year.

New York and Connecticut CTSA Sites Converge

In November, Columbia University hosted the first regional retreat among six New York and Connecticut CTSA sites. The NYCON CTSA Consortium Retreat included representatives from Columbia, Cornell, Einstein, Rochester, Rockefeller, and Yale. The goal of the retreat was to encourage joint ventures and collaborations among the NYCON CTSA institutions.

To kick off the retreat, NCRR Director Barbara Alving, M.D., M.A.C.P., noted that, in the short time since this program began, CTSA institutions are already making considerable progress in strengthening the clinical and translational training workforce through new training programs and interdisciplinary pilot projects, and interaction among CTSA sites regionally has increased (as demonstrated by the NYCON retreat and the formation of Mid and West Consortia). Day one of the retreat featured a number of participant breakout sessions as well as poster presentations
trainees from each of the six CTSA institutions.

In the evening, Ann Marie Schmidt, M.D., Gerald and Janet Carrus Professor of Surgical Science at Columbia University Medical Center, delivered a keynote address, “The RAGE (Receptors for Advanced Glycation Endproducts) in Diabetes.” Dr. Schmidt focused on opportunities and barriers to the translation of basic science discoveries to therapeutic treatments.

During the breakout sessions, participants discussed best practices for pilot funding disbursement and evaluation, social networking approaches, integration of translational research resources and facilities, and predoctoral versus postdoctoral approaches to T32 training. On the second day of the retreat, each breakout group presented its conclusions and suggestions for action. Although no formal recommendations have yet been finalized as a result of the initial meeting, the breakout sessions identified some potential areas for future consideration, such as:

• Develop collaboration between CTSA programs and medical scientist training programs.
• Create regional databases of facilities, resources, and expertise.
• Provide regional training opportunities for investigators and research coordinators.
• Explore barriers to improved social networking as well as metrics to assess the success of social networks.

The retreat provided a foundation for building constructive collaborations. Henry Ginsberg, M.D., principal investigator for Columbia’s CTSA, considered the meeting a success.

I could not have asked for a better start to the development of a consortium between our six CTSAs. The mix of breakout groups, posters, and a dinner keynote speaker seemed to provide a range of activities that maintained a high level of enthusiasm and collegiality throughout the one-and-one-half-day meeting. Now we have to follow up on the findings and suggestions from the breakout groups and move forward with concrete products from the meeting.

NCRR is Changing the Way the CTSA Consortium Accesses the Wiki

NCRR is making it easier for members of the CTSA consortium to access the CTSA Wiki. We’re able to do this because NIH as a whole is moving to a “federated” model for providing access to its computer-based systems.

Under this model, people will be able to use one username and password to access multiple systems hosted by participating institutions, instead of having to remember and use different login information for each system.

The NCRR CTSA Wiki will be one of the first NIH systems to become federated with non-government institutions. The switch could take place as early as February 2009.

You will be most affected by the change if you are from a federated institution. NIH is still working to establish federated relationships with as many CTSA institutions as possible. Accordingly, NCRR will transition access to the CTSA Wiki for federated users from their CTSA Wiki username and password to their home institution-assigned username and password. At the same time, the CTSA program will continue to provide usernames and passwords to users at institutions that are not federated.  

As we make this transition, you will notice that the wiki login screen will change. Each time you go to access the CTSA wiki, you will have to select your home institution from a drop-down menu. Then, if your CTSA institution is federated with the NIH you can login using your home institution–assigned username and password after completing a one-time process that will link them to your current Wiki account information.

NCRR will provide more information about federated access to the CTSA Wiki once a firm date for the transition is set. In the meantime, please continue to use your NIH-assigned username and password to access the CTSA Wiki.

You can learn more about federation and see if your CTSA institution or partnering institution is federated at
www.incommonfederation.org/participants.

Please direct any questions to the CTSA help desk at: help@CTSAweb.org.