PercipEnz, the OnCore PeopleNews

Onsemble 2007 Spring Conference Highlights Opportunities to Work Together

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March 13, 2007

Srini Kalluri

MADISON, WI -- For people concerned with excellence in cancer clinical research operations, the third face-to-face gathering of Onsemble built on past successes with more content, new breakout sessions, and the highest attendance to date. Presentations highlighted key industry trends affecting the community along with several opportunities for collaboration that are evolving.

News Facts:

  • The third Onsemble conference was held at the National Conference Center in Lansdowne, VA from February 28 through March 2, 2007.
  • In attendance were 111 people representing 21 cancer centers, the NCI, AACI (Association of American Cancer Institutes), and CDISC (Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium).
  • Onsemble is a community comprised primarily of administrators, researchers, biostatisticians, clinicians, assistants, software developers, and other staff from 22 cancer centers nationwide.
  • This was the first conference that was opened up to representatives from organizations besides cancer centers and from cancer centers that don't currently use Oncore.
  • Guest speaker, Dr. Kenneth Buetow, Director of NCI's Center for Bioinformatics and head of the caBIG initiative, provided an overview of the current status of caBIG and took a look ahead. Having marked the end of their pilot phase, the caBIG community is now looking to further their presence in biomedical, clinical, and technology enterprises. In his presentation, Dr. Buetow mentioned several opportunities for synergies that exist between caBIG and Onsemble objectives.
  • Guest speaker, Lakshmi M. Grama, branch chief in charge of the National Cancer Institute's Physicians Data Query (PDQ®) database, gave a presentation on the benefits of registering clinical trials with the PDQ database.
  • Guest speaker, Dr. Dave DeMets, chair of the Department of Biostatistics - Medical Informatics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, presented a case for Onsemble members to get involved with helping NIH define its emerging Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) grant program.
  • Guest speaker, Julie Evans, director of Technical Services at the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC), outlined how the consortium has succeeded in developing global clinical data interchange standards that are ready for implementation and why this is important to clinical research operations.
  • Guest speaker, David Dilts, Ph.D., MBA, professor - director of the Center of Management Research in Healthcare at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, illustrated how clinical research operations can identify operational inefficiency and how other industries have achieved better balance and increased productivity in spite of declining resources.
  • In addition to the five special guest speakers, members of the Onsemble community provided 14 presentations throughout the three-day conference.
  • Also new to this conference was a half-day reserved for concurrent breakout sessions. These sessions were provided to give smaller groups of people with similar job roles an opportunity to network and focus on topics specifically related to their job priorities.
  • Updates were given on three new collaborative efforts which were launched during the latter part of 2006 as part of a broader initiative to increase study accruals. These projects are the Oncore Patient Screening Database, Clinical Research Flowcharts, and Electronic Submission to the NCI PDQ® database.
  • Many Onsemble member cancer centers use Oncore®, the industry leader in enterprise-class software for managing clinical trials and the flagship product of PercipEnz Technologies, Inc.

Multimedia Elements:

View the PDQ Video Cancer Centers Role in CTSA Update on caBIG
NCI's PDQ® Cancer Clinical Trials Registry — by Lakshmi Grama, NCI Cancer Centers' Role in CTSA — by Dr. Dave DeMets, University of Wisconsin - Madison Update on caBIG™ — by Dr. Kenneth Buetow, NCI
View the Video View the Video View the Video
CDISC Standards Scorecards for Balance Entering the Golden Age of Cancer Informatics
The Value of CDISC Standards for Data Exchange — by Julie Evans, CDISC The Importance of Balanced Score Card Metrics for Clinical Centers — by Professor David Dilts, Vanderbilt University Entering the Golden Age of Cancer Informatics — by Srini Kalluri, PercipEnz
View the Video View the Video View the Video

About the Oncore People:

PercipEnz Technologies, Inc. is a computer software company that develops and markets specialized, enterprise-class clinical research and biospecimen management systems.

PercipEnz broke new ground with its collaborative product development process. Working with select groups of product users, PercipEnz begins every phase of product development by clarifying the underlying challenges being addressed. The company is host to Onsemble®, a community comprised of administrators, researchers, biostatisticians, research assistants, database administrators, and other staff from research facilities around the country.

Keywords:

Clinical Trials Management, cancer, Software, Specimen Management, Translational Research, SPORE, caBIG, CDISC, metrics

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