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Michael G. Kurilla M.D., Ph.D.

NCATS Director of Clinical Innovation

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Fall is in the Air and a CR is in Effect

By: Michael Kurilla, M.D., Ph.D., NCATS Director of the Division of Clinical Innovation

November 2, 2023

We are fast approaching our upcoming Annual CTSA Program meeting taking place November 6 – 8, right here in Crystal City (and that rhymes with fiscal and we’re in fiscal year 24 in the USG odd way of telling time). As in the past several years, the program has been nearly completed by your peers and colleagues. The theme of this year’s meeting (with a recommendation from ChatGPT) is Leveraging RWD and AI to Advance Translation. The CTSAs have been a major driver of biomedical informatics and data interoperability. CTSAs can continue this leadership with the addition of RWD and AI as data science evolves to a more prominent component of the clinical and translational research arsenal.


After my brief update to lead off, we have ARPA-H on deck. In addition to their overarching programmatic goals, we will hear about two activities of particular interest to CTSAs, the Biomedical Data Fabric Toolbox and Advancing Clinical Trial Readiness. Following this, we have a discussion concerning decentralized trials with an eclectic panel (including the FDA and West Point).
 

The afternoon session starts with a discussion of AI in clinical research followed by a session on training within the science of translation. After a bit of free time reflection after a packed day, the evening is reserved for the poster session. There is a large team of jurors that will be judging the posters with awards to be presented the next day. We start early the next morning with a session on RWD/RWE to be followed by a series of breakout groups focused on various aspects of EHR/RWD, including clinical data / eCRF, patient generated data, cost and utilization data, and public health data.


The final session is one I specifically asked for (and hope that NCATS can secure one session for future meetings). We have arranged to have five of your peers discuss their funded RC2 grants and the Element E portion of their UM1 award. The intent is less a focus on the specific science, but to discuss how they approached the application, conceptualized their set of aims, and related that within a framework of translational science. We’ve also left plenty of time for audience engagement.


Finally, we’ll finish with Duane Mitchell and me offering our top ten takeaways as well as announcing our poster awardees. While it’s 2.5 days of a packed agenda, I hope to carve out as much networking time to engage with as many of the participants as possible, especially our newer members of a growing and vibrant CTSA community.

 


Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically
good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.
– Steve Jobs

Annual CTSA Program Meeting Recap

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