As part of its 2013 Pilot Awards to Improve the Conduct of Research, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) has announced four winners from among 27 proposals submitted by the UC San Francisco community. Proposers offered ideas for improving the design, conduct, or analysis of translational research.
The winning CTSI Pilot Award proposals are:
- Tools and Infrastructure to Facilitate Compliance with ClinicalTrials.Gov Results Reporting: proposed by Stuart Gansky, MS, DrPH;
- Improving the consent process for complex studies: making the study understandable to subjects; proposed by Patricia Katz, PhD;
- Decreasing Time for CHR Approval of Full Committee Review Applications: proposed by Vanessa Jacoby, MD;
- An Early Translational Researcher’s Framework for Health Economics Evaluation: proposed by Ruben Rathnasingham, PhD
Awards include in-kind support from CTSI programs as well as pilot funding. In 2013, funding was reduced due to budget cuts resulting from the federal sequester.
“We received a wide range of interesting and creative ideas,” said Lisa Schoonerman, senior program manager at CTSI who managed the award process. “With 218 comments on the proposals, we also had considerable interest in the process from across campus.”
Proposals were managed through UCSF Open Proposals, an online tool developed by CTSI that enables transparent and collaborative proposal development, promotes multi-disciplinary team building, and reduces the likelihood of redundant proposals.
UCSF's CTSI is a member of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards network funded through the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (grant Number UL1 TR000004) at the National Institutes of Health. Under the banner of "Accelerating Research to Improve Health," CTSI provides a wide range of resources and services for researchers, and promotes online collaboration and networking tools such as UCSF Profiles.