A Model for Engaging Public–Private Partnerships

(ICTSI) was designed with input from a wide variety of critical stakeholders across the entire state of Indiana to create a vibrant engine for “Translational Sciences” research and training. Th e Institute was established in 2008 with a CTSA grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) awarded to the Indiana University (IU) School of Medicine and a consortium of three leading universities in the state that includes Indiana, Purdue and Notre Dame Universities. It brought together a wide array of the state’s government, hospital, industry, and foundation partners to engage all of the key stakeholders in health sciences research (see Figure 1 ). Th us, ICTSI is in a unique position to infl uence biomedical education in the state of Indiana, investigate the majority of Indiana’s population health data through medical informatics capabilities, and exert statewide infl uence in both public and private health services through our partnerships. In short, the ICTSI was created to be a true statewide laboratory to explore innovative methods aimed at transforming research in health economics, health care delivery, and health policy. Although the ICTSI is designed to meet all of the traditional goals of a CTSA award such as training and career development, providing research infrastructure to academic investigators including the Clinical Research Center (CRC), and community engagement programs, this report will specifi cally focus on some of the programs that illustrate our approach to developing successful public–private partnerships to advance translation research and training. From the beginning, ICTSI was conceived as a partnership between academia and private stakeholders and many of our private partners were included in the earliest meetings as we were coalescing to write the grant. Th is early writing period spanned nearly a year of biweekly meetings where many of the representatives from our business and private partners were regular participants. Th ese intense interactions lead to some key insights about what it takes to build successful public private partnerships: 1. Listen and understand each others’ perspectives and priorities to create meaningful communications with potential partners. 2. Identify mutually benefi cial areas of collaboration all the while being sensitive to issues of ownership, confl icts of interest and intellectual property rights. 3. Develop clearly defi ned sets of goals, deliverables and metrics for the collaborative programs. 4. Engage the key personnel from all sides in leadership roles for the program.