CTSC:TTIC.092810

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC

Agenda

1. Consultations update
2. Follow-up from last meeting about consultation/progarm marketing
3. Preparation of Imaging Synergie series (October 27) and BWH/DFCI Radiology Core Clerkship (October 15)

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes September 21, 2010

In attendance:

• Valerie Humblet
• Randy Gollub
• Charles Guttmann
• Bob Lenkinski
• Todd Perlstein
• Annick Van den Abbeele
• Ron Kikinis
• Simon Warfield
• Gordon Harris
• Jeff Yap
• Gordon Williams

1. Consultations update

• We have seen an increased in the number of requests for consultation lately, essentially because people start to learn to use the webform to request consultation instead of contacting the consultant directly.

2. Follow-up from last meeting about consultation/progarm marketing

• Last week we had a very productive face-to-face meeting. We decided that we should do it more often, every 6 weeks. The next face-to-face will be held at DFCI on November 2nd, 9-10 am.
• A couple of ideas from last week on how to increase the use of our consultation service: contact pilot grants applicants who had expressed interest in imaging, work with the IRB on a review/approval process for protocols with imaging, offer to do more imaging protocol review for the different institutions.
  • Right now, if someone apply for a protocol approval to use one of the PCIR centers it requires to be review and approved by a statistician. We could try to implement the same for protocols with an imaging component. It is already the case at DFCI with the concept review meeting (for clinical trials), even if the study has already received NIH approval.
  • A biostatistician review is also mandatory for the IRB, right now there is a review of the radiation dose (radiation safety) but none for the science itself. As Jeff mentioned, adding a mandatory review by the imaging consortium, one that would not delay the IRB approval, is difficult to do, it is almost a full time job to review all the protocols, the burden of work would be overwhelming. A compromise would be to offer our services to anyone interested and to try to help the people in the beginning of their project. When a protocol is submitted to the IRB, very often it is already multi-institution, industry sponsored and it is hard to make changes.