Translational Research Informatics Track

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This track will address the various topics about informatics support to translational biomedical research, including both aspects of the translation such as applying discoveries generated during research in the laboratory and in preclinical studies to the development of trials and studies in humans, and enhancing the adoption of best practices in the community. It spans over the entire spectrum of research from the molecular level to the human population, emphasizing the critical role of informatics in facilitating and optimizing dissemination of biomedical knowledge to biomedical scientists, clinicians, and patients.

Learning Objectives

• To present the latest progress on using informatics approaches to improve translational biomedical research
  
• To provide a platform to share information among the nation-wide initiatives on translational research informatics, such as CTSA, caBIG, NCBC, etc.
  
• To identify the current challenges of translational research informatics and to define the future directions
  

S04 Invited Panel
Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

The NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) Program and Biomedical Informatics

The CTSA program is an NIH Roadmap initiative to renovate the infrastructure of biomedical research, with informatics as one of the key functions. Twelve institutions across the nation have been awarded in the first batch to build a national consortium for clinical and translation science. In this panel, representatives from NIH will discuss the CTSA program and its biomedical informatics component. Informatics directors from a few CTSA sites will present their specific approaches to providing informatics support for clinical and translational research from the institutional prospective. The panel will close with a group discussion on what we might be able to accomplish together as a community.

- Christopher Chute, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
- Elaine Collier, National Institutes of Health/NCRR
- Milton Corn, National Library of Medicine
- William Hersh, Oregon Health & Science University
- Perry Miller, Yale University

S08 Invited Panel
Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

caGRID: A Model for Translational Informatics Research

This panel will focus on caGrid, a model-driven and service-oriented architecture that synthesizes and extends a number of technologies to provide a standardized framework for the advertisement, discovery, and invocation of data and analytical services in the domain of translational cancer research. The panel will elaborate on the caGrid's infrastructure, it's graphical grid service development toolkit called Introduce, and its relationship to the Cancer Standards Repository (caDSR) and Enterprise Vocabulary Service (EVS). The panel will also discuss caGrid's security infrastructure. The Grid Authentication and Authorization of Reliably Distributed Services (GAARDS) includes technologies for user account management (Dorian), group-based authorization (Grid Grouper), and for providing a federated trust fabric (Grid Trust Service). Finally, the panel will discuss caGrid's essential role in translational biomedical applications.

- Joel Saltz, Ohio State University Medical Center
- Shannon Hastings, Ohio State University
- Stephen Langella, Ohio State University
- Baris E. Suzek, Georgetown University
- Kiran Keshav, Columbia University

S13 Panel
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 8:30 am - 10:00 am

Demystifying the NIH Public Access Policy and Other Open Access Venues: How to Optimize the Impact of Your Published Research

Demystifying the NIH Public Access Policy and Other Open Access Venues: How to Optimize the Impact of Your Published Research This panel discussion and workshop will help AMIA members learn the skills necessary to participate in open access publishing, which include understanding the NIH Policy, choosing an optimal publication venue, and managing copyright.

- Philip Kroth, University of New Mexico
- Holly Phillips, University of New Mexico
- Randy Stewart, University of New Mexico

S18 Presentations--Online Collaborative Tools
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm

Online Communities for Translational Research

Recently, the National Institutes of Health funded 12 institutions under its Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, which is designed to accelerate the transfer of results from basic science to their clinical application. The difficulties in making this transfer are widely believed to constrain the quality of medical care in the USA. Academic and other research institutions are knowledge-intensive, but their traditional organizational and behavioral paradigms limit the efficiency and efficacy with which they can pursue the "common good" of biomedical science. For instance, the hierarchical and, predominantly, vertical organization of most university schools and departments, as well as competitive pressures, e.g. for grant funding, are a disincentive to broad information sharing. The challenge for research institutions, specifically the CTSA awardees, is to measurably accelerate the process of scientific discovery with the goal of applying the results in practice. In addition, outcomes and observations from practice need to be connected better to basic science, creating a "virtuous circle" for research.

- Titus Schleyer, University of Pittsburgh

Collaborative Research Portal by Participatory Design

The portal for our NIH-funded National Center for Integrative Biomedical Informatics (NCIBI) aims to provide internal and external users with a gateway into data, tools, and collaborative spaces. To unify these three critical areas we structure our portal around biomedical researchers' actual investigative flow, including their literature searches, computational analysis, and modeling and knowledge sharing. Because the design and development of this structure requires modeling users' actual conduct of science, we argue that designing and selecting appropriate tools and data require a combination of participatory design, usage logs, and coventional formtive evaluation techniques (heuristic evaluations, usability tests). The speakers will justify, explain, and present the results of these methods.

- Barbara Mirel, University of Michigan

IT Infrastructure for Translational Genomic Research

The sequencing of human genome has heralded a new era in medical research. TGen was formed to capitalize on this emerging genetic information for the development of earlier diagnostics and smarter treatments in a manner tailored to individual patients. To accomplish this goal, TGen uses cutting-edge technology in the following strategic areas to accelerate genomic discoveries, study of the disease at a more personal level, and translate them into benefits for human health: (1) Computational Bioscience, (2) High-performance Computing, (3) Knowledge-based Data Management, (4) Web-based Computing, and (5) Bioinformatics. This talk will focus on the main IT challenges that we are facing to accomplish TGen's mission.

- Ed Suh, Translational Genomics Research Instititute

S23 Presentations--Information Systems for Translational Research
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 1:30 pm - 3:00 pm

Leveraging Open Source Technology to Support the Development of Translational Research Informatics Solutions

Within Northrop Grumman Corporation, the Health Solutions Life Sciences practice is currently supporting the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) on two separate projects to develop bioinformatics resources to promote individual and collaborative discovery research activities among basic and clinical research scientists. The Northrop Grumman Life Sciences team uses industry best practice principles in the software development life cycle as we develop these resources for the scientific community. In doing so, the technical architecture and design for these systems and their applications leverage open source technology and solutions.

- Kevin Biersack, Northrop Grumman Corporation

A Data Model for Congenital Heart Disease Research

One out of every 125 children born in the United States has congenital heart disease. It is the number one birth defect in the world, making it the focus of numerous research efforts. Because most hospital information systems (HIS) are patient-centric, congenital heart disease clinical research projects are often difficult and time consuming to conduct. Whether dealing with an HIS or paper-based medical records, once a research project is defined it can take months to gather the case-by-case data necessary to determine the validity of the project. The authors have developed a complete research-centric solution (HeartCenter System) to address the previously stated challenges. This solution has three main sections: transactional data gathering, clinical data warehouse, and data mining and analysis.

- Richard Stroup, Children's Mercy Hospital

The Use of Technology for Audit and Feedback in Translating Research into Practice in the Practice Partner Research Network

Since 1995, the Practice Partner Research Network (PPRNet), a practice-based primary care research network among users of a common electronic medical record (EMR), has emphasized the same themes as the NIH Roadmap for Clinical Research in its efforts to conduct practice-based quality improvement and research. In 2002, PPRNet was one of 22 awardees in AHRQ's Partnerships for Quality initiative. PPRNet's four-year demonstration project evaluated the impact of a multi-component improvement model intended to enhance adherence with over 80 clinical practice guidelines across eight broad clinical areas in primary care practice. The project, termed Accelerating the Translation of Research into Practice (A-TRIP), helped practices adopt a quality improvement model (PPRNet-QI) , shown to improve the translation of cardiovascular disease and diabetes guidelines into primary care. An integral part of PPRNet-QI, and the A-TRIP project, was the use of technology tools for audit and feedback and assessment of clinical improvement.

- Ruth Jenkins, Medical University of SC

S28 Panel
Thursday, May 24, 2007, 8:30 am - 10:00 am

Commingling EMR and Research Data: Perplexing Pathways to Future Transformation

The adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) into general clinical practice is accelerating. With this adoption, the opportunity to leverage EMR technology to support both prospective and retrospective clinical research in diverse practice settings also increases. To support prospective clinical trials integrated into an EMR that primarily supports standard clinical care, significant technical capabilities, ethical imperatives, regulatory requirements, and commercial realities must be aligned. The objective is to ensure that the prospective clinical trial is performed in conformance to existing good clinical practices (GCP) while maintaining acceptable standard-care workflows. This panel will examine the issues surrounding achieving this objective, and of seamlessly integrating standard clinical care and prospective clinical trials data into EMR systems, thus enabling faster translation of new biomedical discoveries.

- Robert DiLaura, Cleveland Clinic
- Michael Kahn, University of Colorado
- Rhonda Kost, Rockefeller University
- Ricardo Pietrobon, Duke University
- Charlene Underwood, Siemens Corporation

Translational Research Informatics Posters

Poster Session One
Tuesday, May 22, 2007, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Managing, reporting from and sharing an integrated data warehouse which combines clinical and mechanistic results on a worldwide network of immunology based clinical trials, Keith Boyce, ITN / UCSF

Project ImpACT: A Web-based Centralized Catalog of the Most Important Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) since 1948, Michael Fox, Johns Hopkins University

Biobank Infrastructure for the 21st Century: Learning from Taiwan, Tyrone Grandison, IBM Almaden Research Center

Estimating missing values for SNP genotypes, Zhen Lin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Achieving Standardized Medication Data in Clinical Research Studies: Two Approaches and Applications for Implementing RxNorm, Rachel Richesson, Univ. of South Florida

Poster Session Two
Wednesday, May 23, 2007, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Incubation of Experimental Ontologies for Biomarker Identification in Ovarian Cancer, Helena Deus, MD Anderson Cancer Center

Web-based Communication in an Animal Lab, Tissue Bank, and Genomic Testing Environment, Alla Guseynova, Johns Hopkins University

The REDCap Consortium - A Case Study in Translational Research Informatics Resource Sharing Among Academic Institutions, Paul Harris, Vanderbilt University

KIK (Key Institutional Knowledgebase): A System for Identifying Alliance Opportunities in Academia and Industry, Jamie Mullen, AstraZeneca Pharmaceutical

Querying Clinical and Genetic Data using the i2b2 Architecture, Shawn Murphy, Massachusetts General Hospital

Using SWRL to Model Rules and Constraints for Clinical Trial Management and Experiment Design, Noah Zimmerman, Stanford University