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Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool.

ABSTRACT: Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public health impacts and back is a central challenge for research managers and policymakers. Organizational leaders need to assess baseline conditions, identify areas needing improvement, and to judge the impact of specific initiatives to sustain or improve translational research practices at their institutions. Currently, there is a lack of such an assessment tool addressing the specific context of translational biomedical research. To close this gap, we have developed a new survey for assessing the organizational climate for translational research. This self-assessment tool measures employees' perceptions of translational research climate and underlying research practices in organizational environments and builds on the established Survey of Organizational Research Climate, assessing research integrity. Using this tool, we show that scientists at a large university hospital (Charité Berlin) perceive translation as a central and important component of their work. Importantly, local resources and direct support are main contributing factors for the practical implementation of translation into their own research practice. We identify and discuss potential leverage points for an improvement of research climate to foster successful translational research.

SUBMITTER: Simons A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7755863 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool.

Simons Arno A Riedel Nico N Toelch Ulf U Hendriks Barbara B Müller-Ohlraun Stephanie S Liebenau Lisa L Ambrasat Jens J Dirnagl Ulrich U Reinhart Martin M

Science and engineering ethics 20200626 6

Promoting translational research as a means to overcoming chasms in the translation of knowledge through successive fields of research from basic science to public health impacts and back is a central challenge for research managers and policymakers. Organizational leaders need to assess baseline conditions, identify areas needing improvement, and to judge the impact of specific initiatives to sustain or improve translational research practices at their institutions. Currently, there is a lack o ...[more]

PMID: 32592136

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Project description:BackgroundIn recent years, there have been numerous initiatives undertaken to describe critical information needs related to the collection, management, analysis, and dissemination of data in support of biomedical research (J Investig Med 54:327-333, 2006); (J Am Med Inform Assoc 16:316-327, 2009); (Physiol Genomics 39:131-140, 2009); (J Am Med Inform Assoc 18:354-357, 2011). A common theme spanning such reports has been the importance of understanding and optimizing people, organizational, and leadership factors in order to achieve the promise of efficient and timely research (J Am Med Inform Assoc 15:283-289, 2008). With the emergence of clinical and translational science (CTS) as a national priority in the United States, and the corresponding growth in the scale and scope of CTS research programs, the acuity of such information needs continues to increase (JAMA 289:1278-1287, 2003); (N Engl J Med 353:1621-1623, 2005); (Sci Transl Med 3:90, 2011). At the same time, systematic evaluations of optimal people, organizational, and leadership factors that influence the provision of data, information, and knowledge management technologies and methods are notably lacking.MethodsIn response to the preceding gap in knowledge, we have conducted both: 1) a structured survey of domain experts at Academic Health Centers (AHCs); and 2) a subsequent thematic analysis of public-domain documentation provided by those same organizations. The results of these approaches were then used to identify critical factors that may influence access to informatics expertise and resources relevant to the CTS domain.ResultsA total of 31 domain experts, spanning the Biomedical Informatics (BMI), Computer Science (CS), Information Science (IS), and Information Technology (IT) disciplines participated in a structured surveyprocess. At a high level, respondents identified notable differences in theaccess to BMI, CS, and IT expertise and services depending on the establishment of a formal BMI academic unit and the perceived relationship between BMI, CS, IS, and IT leaders. Subsequent thematic analysis of the aforementioned public domain documents demonstrated a discordance between perceived and reported integration across and between BMI, CS, IS, and IT programs and leaders with relevance to the CTS domain.ConclusionDifferences in people, organization, and leadership factors do influence the effectiveness of CTS programs, particularly with regard to the ability to access and leverage BMI, CS, IS, and IT expertise and resources. Based on this finding, we believe that the development of a better understanding of how optimal BMI, CS, IS, and IT organizational structures and leadership models are designed and implemented is critical to both the advancement of CTS and ultimately, to improvements in the quality, safety, and effectiveness of healthcare.

Project description:Maximizing efficiency in drug development is important for drug developers, policymakers, and human subjects. Limited funds and the ethical imperative of risk minimization demand that researchers maximize the knowledge gained per patient-subject enrolled. Yet, despite a common perception that the current system of drug development is beset by inefficiencies, there remain few approaches for systematically representing, analyzing, and communicating the efficiency and coordination of the research enterprise. In this paper, we present the first steps toward developing such an approach: a graph-theoretic tool for representing the Accumulating Evidence and Research Organization (AERO) across a translational trajectory.This initial version of the AERO model focuses on elucidating two dimensions of robustness: (1) the consistency of results among studies with an identical or similar outcome metric; and (2) the concordance of results among studies with qualitatively different outcome metrics. The visual structure of the model is a directed acyclic graph, designed to capture these two dimensions of robustness and their relationship to three basic questions that underlie the planning of a translational research program: What is the accumulating state of total evidence? What has been the translational trajectory? What studies should be done next?We demonstrate the utility of the AERO model with an application to a case study involving the antibacterial agent, moxifloxacin, for the treatment of drug-susceptible tuberculosis. We then consider some possible elaborations for the AERO model and propose a number of ways in which the tool could be used to enhance the planning, reporting, and analysis of clinical trials.The AERO model provides an immediate visual representation of the number of studies done at any stage of research, depicting both the robustness of evidence and the relationship of each study to the larger translational trajectory. In so doing, it makes some of the invisible or inchoate properties of the research system explicit - helping to elucidate judgments about the accumulating state of evidence and supporting decision-making for future research.

Dataset Information

Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool.

Publications

Assessing the Organizational Climate for Translational Research with a New Survey Tool.

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