Contribution by a multidisciplinary team of in-training medical professionals, for the continuous development of a customizable database for the evaluation and dissemination of translational and evidenced based clinical research
Dana A Oliver MPH; Saint Louis University Cancer Center; Medhat Osman MD; Saint Louis University; Mark A. Varvares MD; Saint Louis University; John Buerck PhD; Saint Louis University -Professional Studies; Dorina Kallogjeri MPH; Saint Louis University Cancer Center;
Content:
Medical informatics provides an avenue for real-time dissemination of recently available treatments for cancer while also monitoring the continuum of care (pre-treatment, treatment and outcomes). Barriers preventing real-time monitoring and rapid dissemination of such information include: available personnel having time to collect data in a standardized and statistically summarizable format; and available time to conduct and publish the findings in a reasonable timeframe. Many in-training medical professionals are required to design and conduct research projects. These in-training professionals include: residents, medical students, and masters and bachelors level interns from allied health professions. Therefore the Saint Louis University Cancer Center has provided an opportunity and mechanism to assist and expose these in-training medical professionals to, not only the steps of a research project, but also to realize the value of collaborations with various disciplines of all types of medical professionals contributing to the treatment and survivorship of cancer patients.
Technology:
The technologies used to develop the application interface was Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and the application database used was SQL Server 2005. Scannable data collection forms were constructed using Snap Survey Software Version 8 and statistical analyses were performed using SPSS version 11.5-14.0.
Design:
The participants, including residents and fellows representing seven clinical disciplines were required to design and conduct oncology focused research (July 2003 to May 2007). Residents and primary investigators had the opportunity to collaborate with masters and bachelors students completing an internship in nuclear medicine technology, dietician, information technology and nursing. Participants were supervised by their principal investigator, biostatistician (design data collection worksheets and summarized data) and co-director of the tissue procurement laboratory (assistance with the collection or use of banked tissue for research).
Results:
All participants collected data elements required to address their primary research objective. The number of elements collected by this collaborative group include: Dermatology (n=359); ENT (n=346); GI (n=51); Hematology/Oncology (n=354); Surgery (n=87); and Genetics (n=759) Radiation Medicine (n=866).
Conclusion:
In-training medical professionals are able to ascertain, first-hand, the importance of biostatistics and bioinformatics. Furthermore, the procedure elaborated above promotes collaboration among medical doctors, while underscoring the value and contribution of allied health professionals. Recently medical informatics and occupational therapy have joined the collaborative efforts of the multidisciplinary focused approach. Future considerations include occupational therapys expertise to assist in the development of research in the survivorship needs among cancer patients. Finally, this collaborative educational program is instrumental in the construction of a comprehensive multidisciplinary oncology database readily available for research.
