Review of Three Divisions of the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology: Fiscal Year 2015 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2016-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

ADEQUACY OF FACILITIES, EQUIPMENT, AND HUMAN RESOURCES

Accomplishments

There are notable examples of good infrastructure available for the IAD, such as the Biometric Research Laboratory. Also impressive is a well-cultivated mechanism to expanded reach and impact through off-campus centers of excellence such as the effort with the University of Maryland and the use of cross-organizational virtual teams within ITL and across NIST.

Opportunities and Challenges

The IAD team plays a significant role as leaders and shepherds of their communities of expertise. To fulfill this role with timeliness and excellence, seamless interaction and agility are critical success factors. As such, operational latencies in IRB or travel approval processes can be first-order detriments.

Maximization of impact depends on continued cross-division collaboration and resource allocations. In a strategy that was described by IAD during the review, there appeared to be a major focus in the first one or two years of a new business area, followed by a reliance on the momentum and eventual allocation of resources to the budget. This might be a process worthy of more attention. Ideally, practices would be formalized in a way that permits their reuse for subsequent cross-division projects.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The facilities, equipment, and human resources are strong assets of the IAD. As areas such as health informatics gain importance, there seems to be a tendency to make do with the core talent areas rather than hiring specialists (trained biomedical informaticians and health data scientists) permanently or even for shorter times. This practice needs to be reconsidered in the strategic planning of the division. A prime example of this need is the EHR team.

Recommendation: The Information Access Division (IAD) should bolster the electronic health record team to ensure that this high-profile work is well supported in terms of information technology rigor as well as domain expertise. IAD should add scientists or contractors with strong clinical experience, include all stakeholders (physicians, nurses, technicians, pharmacists, and patients) in its empirical investigations, and participate in medical informatics communities such the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) and the congressionally chartered Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). Internally, the IAD should collaborate closely with the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) team on medical tracks.

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