Open AccessDeveloping Common Metrics for the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSAs): Lessons Learned
Author(s) -
Rubio Doris M.,
Blank Arthur E.,
Dozier Ann,
Hites Lisle,
Gilliam Victoria A.,
Hunt Joe,
Rainwater Julie,
Trochim William M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
clinical and translational science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.303
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1752-8062
pISSN - 1752-8054
DOI - 10.1111/cts.12296
Subject(s) - translational research , translational science , computer science , identification (biology) , data science , variety (cybernetics) , process (computing) , diversity (politics) , set (abstract data type) , function (biology) , management science , process management , medicine , engineering , artificial intelligence , political science , pathology , botany , evolutionary biology , law , biology , programming language , operating system
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap for Medical Research initiative, funded by the NIH Common Fund and offered through the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program, developed more than 60 unique models for achieving the NIH goal of accelerating discoveries toward better public health. The variety of these models enabled participating academic centers to experiment with different approaches to fit their research environment. A central challenge related to the diversity of approaches is the ability to determine the success and contribution of each model. This paper describes the effort by the Evaluation Key Function Committee to develop and test a methodology for identifying a set of common metrics to assess the efficiency of clinical research processes and for pilot testing these processes for collecting and analyzing metrics. The project involved more than one‐fourth of all CTSAs and resulted in useful information regarding the challenges in developing common metrics, the complexity and costs of acquiring data for the metrics, and limitations on the utility of the metrics in assessing clinical research performance. The results of this process led to the identification of lessons learned and recommendations for development and use of common metrics to evaluate the CTSA effort.