The Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR) is being formed in response to this CTSA initiative and aims to address a multitude of challenges which are slowing the pace, efficiency, and success of clinical and translational research and which ultimately created immense lost opportunities to develop therapies for important human diseases. Recognizing these barriers, Vanderbilt begantaking specific remedial actions almost 5 years ago. Under this CTSA, VICTR will be organized and designed to focus on both bench to bedside and bedside to practice translation. Importantly, we have formed a focused partnership with Meharry Medical College leveraging a strong Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance. We will reengineer processes to remove impediments and release investigators from administrative burdens through the creation and/or optimization of institutional infrastructure, including, shared translational technologies, centralized record keeping, and one-stop shopping for support. We will produce inspired personnel who are trained in the bi-directional process of translational research via a multi-faceted education, training program that is linked directly to incentives and career development pathways as well as ongoing development. We will support translational research with resources, methodological development activities, and expert support staff with participant and clinical interactions resources, resources for translating clinical discoveries into practice, including community engagement, knowledge management and biomedical informatics, and study design, biostatistics and clinical research ethics. We will foster innovation by stimulating contribution from collaborators, creating value-added review processes, and implementing long-range planning which includes active solicitation of pilot research. We will enrich the translational research environment with informatics based tools that enhance hypothesis generation, planning, innovation, evaluation and program management by developing a web-based interactive work flow, decision support tool and database which allows us to manage VICTR workflow processes to optimize data capture in the course of conducting daily activities. These innovations will be evaluated to determine their effect on stated CTSA objectives. Our long term vision, together with the CTSA consortium, is to measurably improve population health.
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