Clinical science and its translation into preventive and clinical patient care are the primary means by which the nation's health care goals are fulfilled. NIH's broad mission to improve health outcomes for all people can only be achieved if scientific advances are transformed into improvements in public health. As emphasized throughout the NIH Roadmap, there is a critical need to build our nation's research capacity for clinical and translational research so that findings can be more quickly and effectively translated into clinica practice. This Phase II SBIR project will continue the research and development of Research Implementation and Management System (RIMS), the first integrated system of online research tools specifically designed to meet the needs of clinical and translational scientists in the socia and behavioral fields. Through efficient, cost- effective, and tailored research implementation and management tools, RIMS will harness the Internet's power to effectively increase research capacity. RIMS will integrate and streamline all needed research activities from recruitment and retention to human participant protections to data collection and database management. RIMS will be broadly applicable, providing customizable tools that can be easily integrated into a research protocol. Further, RIMS'online tools are built on robust, HIPAA-compliant data security standards. No other product provides a comprehensive suite of integrated research implementation and management tools tailored to the needs of social/behavioral researchers. Phase I feasibility test results with researchers provide strong support for continued development and testing of RIMS. During Phase II, we will build on Phase I feedback to finalize the fully functioning web-based product and conduct a field test examining the degree to which RIMS enhances the quality, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness of clinical and translational research. This Phase II project will accomplish three specific aims: 1) Full product development and usability testing with clinical and translational researchers in the social and behavioral sciences (PIs, Project Coordinators, &Research Staff;n=20 per group);2) Field testing in collaboration with 12 research teams to examine the impact of RIMS over a 6-month period in cost-effectiveness, time efficiency, recruitment and retention, data quality, and satisfaction;and 3) finalizing the product based on test results and user evaluations. Over the course of 3-C ISD's work with research scientists, it has become clear there is a large unmet need and demand for web-based research management tools, particularly in social and behavioral fields (see letters of support). By making such technologies affordable and broadly applicable, RIMS has the potential to significantly advance the research capacity of clinical and translational research through high quality, time-efficient, and cost-effective research management and implementation tools. As a result, our nation's ability to transform research findings into improved health outcomes can be strengthened and accelerated.
NIH's mission to improve health outcomes for all people emphasizes the need to accelerate and strengthen clinical and translational research. Technology can play a vital role in achieving this goal through web-based tools for researchers that allow them to conduct, disseminate, and translate their research more efficiently and with higher quality. Currently, comprehensive web-based tools are rarely used in the service of clinical or translational research in the social and behavioral sciences. Social and behavioral research plays a critical role in advancing the understanding and prevention of public health problems, both at the individual level (e.g., drug and alcohol abuse) and at the systems level (e.g., health economics, delivery systems). The treatment and prevention of diabetes, obesity, drug abuse, violence, and myriad other public health concerns depend on good research that is conducted cost-effectively and translated efficiently. The proposed Research Implementation Management System (RIMS) will offer a suite of online research tools to streamline the various activities needed to conduct clinical and translational research in the social and behavioral sciences, including recruitment, retention, human participant protections, measure construction, data collection, and database management. This product will be developed and tested in response to the needs of clinical and translational researchers across a broad array of social and behavioral fields. The underlying web-based technology infrastructure of RIMS will be broadly applicable, providing customizable tools that can be easily integrated into a research protocol. RIMS will bridge geographic barriers by giving researchers with fewer institutional supports for research equal access to affordable, flexible technology. In effect, this SBIR will be able to support the research of scientists across multiple NIH Institutes, with particular relevanc for the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH), National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institute on Aging (NIA), and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Bringing the RIMS product to market would broadly support NIH's mission to improve public health outcomes through strengthening capacity of clinical and translational science.
