Information Management Prototype for Clinical and Translational Research (IMPACT-CTR)

A study focused on understanding the tools and strategies teams use in seeking, using, creating, sharing, storing, and retrieving information

What is this offering?

Are you interested in improving your team’s processes to make collaborative science more efficient? Get free expert guidance on how to effectively manage your team’s information! Collaboration Planning (valued at $1000) is a hands-on session that helps your team streamline how you collaborate. Led by PI Dr. Betsy Rolland, this widely adopted team science intervention has been delivered to 70+ teams and 400+ facilitators nationwide! Participate in IMPACT-CTR and get Collaboration Planning for free! Interested? Sign up here.

This study explores the tools teams use to manage their information while conducting collaborative clinical and translational research. Participation is virtual and involves:

• Brief surveys (~10 mins)
• One-on-one interviews about how you collaborate (~60 minutes)
• Some teams may be asked to allow a study team member to observe a team meeting, while a few individuals may be invited to a 30-minute user experience interview to demonstrate their information management tools or strategies.

At the end of your team’s interviews, we will schedule a 90-minute facilitated Collaboration Planning session with your team. Our findings will be used to develop a learning module to help teams improve their approach to information management.

Who is eligible to participate? 

Any funded team working in clinical and translational research, broadly defined. Teams should have a minimum of 4 members (including the PI), and be based in the U.S. Preferably, the team will represent multiple roles (e.g., project manager, data manager, scientist, student, etc.). Your work could fall at any phase in the translational research process, from basic to clinical to population to community-based research.

Why should you and your team participate?

• You will be improving your teamwork! In previous research, we have found that the simple act of discussing team processes, like how your team manages information, will have a positive impact on how your team works together. Teams rarely take the time to discuss their approach to teamwork, which can lead to conflict and less effective teams. By participating in this project, your team will begin to pay attention to how you work together instead of focusing exclusively on your scientific tasks.
• Your next grant proposal will be enhanced! A collaboration plan can enhance your next grant proposal, especially with multiple PIs or as part of a large Center grant, demonstrating a high-functioning team.
• You will be contributing to science! By sharing your strategies and challenges around information, you will help us create best practices that can make scientific work more efficient and effective.
• Your team will have early access to the new information strategy learning module when it is ready!

Other considerations

This project is funded by NIH. The study was deemed exempt by the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board, HUM00255826. Your participation is confidential. No names or identifiable information will be published. We may quote you directly without using your name. Interviews will be audio and video recorded for transcription by the research team or a hired transcriber. Transcriptions will be saved, and recordings will be destroyed. Data will be securely stored on U-M servers, with identifying details kept separate.

Questions? 

Please feel free to contact us by email at [email protected]

For more information regarding the research areas please view previous JCTS papers on Information Behaviors of Translational Teams:

• Chladek J, Kelly PW, Rolland B. Freelance information management agents: why information management is so hard on translational teams. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. 2023;7(1):e209. doi:10.1017/cts.2023.616
• Kelly PW, Chladek J, Rolland B. Toward a translational team science hierarchy of needs: Exploring the information management challenges of team science. Journal of Clinical and Translational Science. 2023;7(1):e210. doi:10.1017/cts.2023.614

Research Team

Betsy Rolland, PhD, MLIS, MPH, Principal Investigator

Beth LaPensee, PhD, Co-Investigator

Shruthi Venkatesh, PhD, Project Scientist

How this advances translational science

Developing and implementing innovations that address persistent challenges to advancing translational progress.