Translational Research in Academia and Industry

Benchmarks for ethically credible partnerships between industry and academic health centers: beyond disclosure of financial conflicts of interest

Relationships between industry and university-based researchers have been commonplace for decades and have received notable attention concerning the conflicts of interest these relationships may harbor. While new efforts are being made to update conflict of interest policies and make industry relationships with academia more transparent, the development of broader institutional partnerships between industry and academic health centers challenges the efficacy of current policy to effectively manage these innovative partnerships. In this paper, we argue that existing strategies to reduce conflicts of interest are not sufficient to address the emerging models of industry-academic partnerships because they focus too narrowly on financial matters and are not comprehensive enough to mitigate all ethical risk. Moreover, conflict-of-interest strategies are not designed to promote best practices nor the scientific and social benefits of academic-industry collaboration. We propose a framework of principles and benchmarks for "ethically credible partnerships" between industry and academic health centers and describe how this framework may provide a practical and comprehensive approach for designing and evaluating such partnerships.

People and organizational issues in research systems implementation

Knowledge about people and organizational issues pertinent to implementation and maintenance of clinical systems has grown steadily over the past fifteen years. Less is known about implementation of systems used for clinical and biomedical research. In conjunction with current National Institutes of Health Roadmap efforts that promote translational research, these issues should now be identified and addressed. During the 2007 American College of Medical Informatics Symposium, members discussed behavioral aspects of translational informatics. This article summarizes that discussion, which covered organizational issues, implications of how knowledge about clinical systems implementation can inform research systems implementation, and those issues unique to each kind of system.