Established in 2009, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) was renewed for a five-year term in 2022 with a $34 million grant. The CTSA Program of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) mission is to accelerate discoveries, development, and delivery of new treatments to improve health outcomes across the lifespan.
The award supports the ISMMS Institutes for Translational Sciences’ strategic plan to develop an infrastructure to support research and educate the next generation of investigators. ISMMS is one of approximately 60 CTSA-funded hubs across the country. CTSA hubs are expected to streamline the research process to get studies up and running faster; to enhance collaborations with other hubs, community providers, patients, and industry; and to promote team science and develop effective methods for recruitment and retention of clinical research participants. ConduITS accomplishes this by:
- Providing consultation, oversight, and facilities for clinical and translational research.
- Developing new methodologies to improve trial design and reduce participant burden.
- Innovate processes to increase the quality and efficiency of translational research.
- Develop informatics tools and solutions to accelerate the full translational continuum.
- Develop innovative educational programs training the workforce needed to respond to the challenges of translational science.
- Engaging the community and its affiliates to translate health benefits to the public.
Mission: ConduITS will harness unique strengths in translational research informatics, digital health, and data science to transform research, engagement, and the science of translation to accelerate discoveries into better health outcomes matched to diverse population needs across the lifespan. We will augment ConduITS’ role in transforming the local, regional, and national translational research enterprise to improve health through development and sharing of innovative educational programs, participating in multi-site trials including centralized regulatory oversight, subcontracting and data-sharing, incentivizing transdisciplinary team science in emerging scientific fields (e.g. precision medicine, public health, and exposomics), entrepreneurship, and in training the future workforce emphasizing emerging clinical and bioinformatics learning health system approaches and related big data initiatives. Our plans across the domains serving as organizing principles for our CTSA hub include:
Aim 1. Workforce Development. Evolve learning opportunities promoting transdisciplinary clinical data science and entrepreneurial activities across the translational research spectrum, emphasizing core competencies of excellence for students, investigators and research staff at all levels, as well as evaluation and dissemination of new research tools, innovative technologies, and methods to advance training goals locally, regionally, and nationally. Building from our internationally recognized scholars in team science, data science, community engagement, and commercialization experts constituting our Innovation Ecosystem optional function, we will cultivate a transdisciplinary learning culture conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship through incentives to work across and beyond traditional disciplines, facilitate the formation of transdisciplinary teams, and further embed team science and entrepreneurial activities in promotion and tenure evaluations.
Aim 2. Advance core tenets of socially responsible clinical translational research and training, promote activity that drives sustainable change, and accelerates development across all leadership ranks in ConduITS.
Aim 3. Collaboration and Engagement. Engage diverse stakeholders in all phases of translational research through accelerator models constituted to address priority community concerns and apply a life course and data science framework to drive community-centered strategies and solutions using data science innovations to catalyze research, training, and engagement. We will take engagement and team science in new directions by: 1) deepening and expanding stakeholder contributions - from gathering trust and input, to skill building and placing partners in new research and dissemination opportunities (citizen-scientist); 2) developing and disseminating new partnership mechanisms (accelerators) and novel forums (Open Space eResearch Summits) and trainings (Hackathons); and 3) incorporating novel tools for communication, research, and translation (ArcGIS StoryMaps, apps).
Aim 4. Informatics. Leveraging informatics advances to better coordinate health care delivery with translational research by integrating secure electronic health records (EHRs), patient reported outcomes, clinical trials management systems, and our biobanks and data repositories, better connecting patients and clinicians with clinical trials and community engaged research. We will enhance access to our CTSA hub partners with guidance, training, best practices, and user-friendly tools that create a more actionable and scalable informatics ecosystem that enables innovative applications of translational bioinformatics research, engagement, and data-driven medical practice.
Aim 5. Methods and Processes. Innovate and streamline research administrative oversight and processes to minimize roadblocks, identify and rectify gaps, ensure quality and integrity, monitor outcomes and garner feedback from stakeholders to facilitate and enhance participation in clinical translational research supported by ConduITS, regional CTSA hubs, and the CTSA national network.
Aim 6. Integration. Incorporate translational research across the lifespan, with particular focus on perinatal and pediatric research, geriatric populations, and populations impacted by health disparities; accelerate integration of environment in life course precision medicine via our innovative Exposomics optional function.
Impact: Addressing these aims will augment ConduITS’ role in transforming the national translational research enterprise to improve human health by developing and sharing innovative educational programs, participating in multi-site trials including centralized regulatory oversight, subcontracting and data-sharing, incentivizing transdisciplinary team science, and developing new tools to integrate and securely “mine” datasets throughout the MSHS and interested hubs in the CTSA Network.