Dr. Ruth O’Hara interviewed for
CRF Member Spotlight, Stanford's Top 10 Award

The Clinical Research Forum (CRF) recently interviewed Dr. Ruth O’Hara, Senior Associate Dean for Research at the Stanford School of Medicine and the Principal Investigator of the Stanford Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA), about the role that the Stanford CTSA plays in furthering clinical and translational research, and about Stanford’s CRF Top 10 Award. Dr. O’Hara’s responses, published in the CRF Member Spotlight feature, are below.

What does it mean for a Top 10 Award-winning study to be from your CTSA?

The Stanford CTSA is deeply invested in advancing biomedical innovations and cutting-edge transdisciplinary research. Our location in the heart of an exceptional biomedical innovation ecosystem means that we focus on translating technological innovations into advances that improve human health.  Winning the top 10 Award is an incredible honor and a highly valued recognition from our peers of our approach: translating our basic science discoveries and technological advances into medical breakthroughs that benefit patients, their families and lead to enhanced management and treatment of chronic diseases, such as diabetes.

"Winning the Top 10 Award is an incredible honor and a highly valued recognition from our peers of our approach: translating our basic science discoveries and technological advances into medical breakthroughs that benefit patients, their families and lead to enhanced management and treatment of chronic diseases, such as diabetes.”
                                             - Ruth O'Hara, PhD

The Teamwork, Targets, Technology and Tight Control (4T) study recognized by the CRF Top 10 Award is a perfect example of the capabilities enabled by the Stanford CTSA. The 4T study led by Dr. David Maahs and colleagues implemented a team-based program to initiate continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) within the first month of diabetes diagnosis combined with weekly population health dashboard-facilitated remote patient monitoring (RPM) for all young people with new-onset type 1 diabetes (T1D) to significantly improve glycemia. Their study offers a model for sustainable use of digital technologies that makes a significant contribution to the public health goal of managing the costs and burden of chronic diseases using innovative digital health approaches. The study is also an excellent illustration of the transdisciplinary collaboration that we believe is a significant strength of our Stanford CTSA: bringing together investigators from multiple disciplines, including Pediatric Endocrinology, Management Science and Engineering, Digital Health Research and the CTSA-supported Quantitative Sciences Unit.  

The Top 10 Award also performs a function that is very important to us. It highlights and enables us to share the research innovations we develop locally to the broader scientific community with benefits for our patients, our biomedical research enterprise, and for health care more broadly. Our goal at the Stanford CTSA is not only to develop leading technologies and demonstrate scientific leadership in critical areas of biomedicine but also to disseminate, educate, and improve our ability to implement these advances in the frontlines of health care across the country. 

How does the Stanford CTSA help further clinical and translational research?

The Stanford CTSA emphasizes advancing the Science of Translation through our focus on Rigor and Reproducibility and Team Science. The Stanford CTSA’s programs in clinical, translational, and science of translation research and education (CTSRE) have been designed to extend from the earliest stages of the translational pipeline to the “final mile” of implementation science at the patient level. The Stanford CTSA has a history of pioneering innovations in translational science with our Biodesign program that is a model of transdisciplinary collaboration between schools of engineering, business, and medicine, and health outcome programs that are expert in using large-scale databases to probe critical areas of disease risk and management. The tradition of innovation continues with our CTSA leading efforts in areas of Rigor and Reproducibility, and also Artificial Intelligence applied to Real-World data for advancing translational science research and education. Stanford CTSA investigators are acknowledged leaders in the field of Artificial intelligence, real-world data, innovative clinical trial design, and rigor and reproducibility in science. They also contribute to research capacity in these areas within the CTSA network. The Stanford Program on Rigor and Reproducibility (SPORR) leads the nation in developing educational and training resources that help implement principles and practices that make biomedical research—from the lab to the clinic and the population—rigorous and reproducible. Ensuring rigorous and reproducible research practices is an integral part of the education we provide to our trainees throughout our CTSA.  Indeed, our CTSA’s educational and training programs integrate the scientific advances in all these areas to train the next generation of physician-scientists to serve as leaders of our biomedical research enterprise, translating fundamental basic and technological findings into clinical care. 

As part of the national consortium of CTSAs, our impact extends beyond our institutional boundaries. The Stanford CTSA actively collaborates with other CTSAs in the network to advance translational science and disseminate scientific innovations. For example, Stanford CTSA partnered with Stanford GReGOR, one of 6 sites in the National Institutes of Health Genomics Research to Elucidate the Genetics of Rare disease (GREGoR) consortium and with other CTSAs to develop a proposal to extend the reach of cutting-edge genomic medicine tools, hitherto available only at large academic medical institutions, to patients in widespread geographical areas. This example captures an important aspect of the work of the Stanford CTSA: cutting-edge technological innovations in genomic medicine pioneered at Stanford that will be disseminated in partnership with other CTSA’s to improve national health outcomes for all Americans irrespective of geographical areas. 

How important is the CTSA funding to future research initiatives at your institution?

We have always recognized that CTSAs are a critical part of the nation’s investment in clinical and translational research which ensures that discoveries in basic sciences translate to tangible health care approaches and treatments for patients and communities. 

As we move to the future the Stanford CTSA will augment the development and implementation of innovative, data driven, and clinical operational approaches to accelerate and scale translational research and science of translation efforts. Stanford CTSA is a pioneer in use of AI and real-world data to produce real-world evidence for translation. The national CTSA consortium extends the reach and benefits of the innovations we develop at Stanford throughout the CTSA network. Thus, the benefits of innovations enabled by the CTSA extend beyond our institutional boundaries to health care and most importantly to patients themselves. 

Simply put, our CTSA’s future research initiatives will advance biomedicine and help deliver more treatments to more people more quickly. 

https://www.clinicalresearchforum.org/news/697359/Member-Spotlight---Stanford-CTSA.htm