2nd Annual ICTS Symposium & Poster Session
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Over 170 students, faculty scholars, staff, and community partners attended the 2nd annual Institute of Clinical and Translational Sciences (ICTS) Symposium on January 15th at the Eric P. Newman Education Center on the Washington University Medical School campus. The day-long event featured presentations, breakout discussions, and poster sessions focused on implementation science and entrepreneurship.
The event kicked-off with a special presentation to Enola Proctor, PhD, of the Lifetime Achievement Award for Advancing Dissemination and Implementation Science by Edward Lawlor, PhD. Following the presentation, Proctor provided the keynote address, “Rolling Out Discoveries – Faster, Better, Farther”, setting the stage for the days’ themes of implementation science, innovation and entrepreneurship. “Implementation science has a critical role in research translation,” commented Proctor. “We must remember that only through a concentrated effort applying distinct and innovative methods can we narrow the gap between evidence-based research and routine practice.”
Other speakers included Doug Luke, PhD, with his remarks on “Measuring the Societal Benefits of Translational Science”. During his presentation, Luke announced the launch of a new website. The site intends to educate those interested in and engaged in clinical and translational science about the Translational Science Benefits Model, a new framework for assessing the health and societal benefits of clinical and translational science. Emre Toker, MSEE, followed Luke’s comments with a presentation on the “Crossing the Valley of Death in the Journey from Discovery to Practice” and touched on many of the obstacles researchers need to anticipate in order to deploy their research to a commercial level.
The symposium continued with an afternoon of breakout session topics on dissemination and implementation (D&I) including: innovative communications, advancing research questions to practice, and assessing idea viability. The day concluded with a poster session featuring abstracts from over 60 presenters on various topics across dissemination and implementation.
Overall, presenters and attendees agreed that we must continue addressing the challenges of translating our clinical discoveries to meaningful application to human health. “Dissemination and implementation was an important and timely theme for this year’s symposium,” commented Bradley Evanoff, MD, MPH and Director of the ICTS. “All research needs to show its value and D&I is key to shortening the lag time between scientific discovery and its application to human health.”