Nature Of Such Collaborations Research Articles

Characterization of industry relationships in oncology.

11025 Background: Collaborative relationships between academic oncology and the pharmaceutical industry are essential for therapeutic development in oncology. Despite this, formal training and mentorship in developing productive industry collaborations are not routinely included in oncology training. Since little research has been done to characterize and optimize the efficiency of these relationships, we sought to better understand the nature of such collaborations in order to identify areas for optimization. Methods: An electronic survey was administered to 1000 randomly selected ASCO members. The survey included 23 questions eliciting demographic and practice information, and 26 questions eliciting respondents’ views around oncology-industry collaborations. Survey results were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: There were 225 survey respondents. Most were from the United States (70%), worked at an academic institution (60.1%), worked in medical oncology (81.2%), and had an active relationship with industry (85.8%). 26.7 % of respondents reported difficulty establishing a relationship with industry collaborators. Many relied on federal (39.5%) or departmental (30.2%) funding to supplement their research ventures. Partnerships were initiated by the respondents themselves (34.6%) or industry partners (31.9%) with similar frequency, whereas institutional affiliations (15.7%) and collaborative groups (5.8%) were reported as less common means for establishing collaborations. The majority (85.3%) of respondents stated these collaborations were of importance to their career. Inclusion in industry sponsored trials (71.1%) and commitment to research funding (66.3%) were considered early signs of a productive relationship, whereas lack of effective communication (86.1%) or little engagement by senior industry leadership (63.1%) were early red flags. Most respondents (75%) did not report having had mentorship in developing these relationships. Scientific integrity was generally thought to be preserved (92%) and there was little concern over the quality of the collaborative product (95%). Many shared concern over potential conflict of interest if a compensated relationship promoted an industry product for clinical care/research (60%), yet also stated these relationships did not shape their interactions with patients (67%). Conclusions: This study provides novel data characterizing the nature of collaborative industry-academia relationships in oncology. While respondents considered these collaborations an important part of clinical and academic oncology, formal education or mentorship around these relationships is rare. Further study exploring the structure of effective industry collaborations, optimizing methods to provide education in this area at all career stages, navigating conflict of interest issues in these relationships, and understanding industry perspectives is warranted.

Everyday ethical challenges of nurse-physician collaboration.

Collaboration between physicians and nurses is key to improving patient care. We know very little about collaboration and interdisciplinary practice in African healthcare settings. The purpose of this study was to explore the ethical challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration in clinical practice and education in Botswana Participants and research context: This qualitative descriptive study was conducted with 39 participants (20 physicians and 19 nurses) who participated in semi-structured interviews at public hospitals purposely selected to represent the three levels of hospitals in Botswana (referral, district, and primary). Following Institutional Review Board Approval at the University of Pennsylvania and the Ministry of Health in Botswana, participants' written informed consent was obtained. Respondents' ages ranged from 23 to 60 years, and their duration of work experience ranged from 0.5 to 32 years. Major qualitative themes that emerged from the data centered on the nature of the work environment, values regarding nurse-doctor collaboration, the nature of such collaboration, resources available for supporting collaboration and the smooth flow of work, and participants' views about how their work experiences could be improved. Participants expressed concerns that their work environment compromised their ability to provide high-quality and safe care to their patients. The physician staffing structure was described as consisting of a few specialists at the top, a vacuum in the middle that should be occupied by senior doctors, and junior doctors at the bottom-and not a sufficient number of nursing staff. Collaboration between physicians and nurses is critical to optimizing patients' health outcomes. This is true not only in the United States but also in developing countries, such as Botswana, where health care professionals reported that their ethical challenges arose from resource shortages, differing professional attitudes, and a stressful work environment.

Research collaboration in Large Scale Research Infrastructures: Collaboration types and policy implications

Over the past decades, Large Scale Research Infrastructures (LSRIs) have come to play a central role in providing scientist-users access to highly specialised scientific instrumentation and experimental conditions. Collaborations between (permanent) instrument scientists and users are at the core of these organisations, yet knowledge about the nature of such collaborations and their development over time is surprisingly scarce. In particular, we know very little about the interrelation between the individual and organisational drivers of collaboration. Based on a qualitative study of scientists and their collaborations at Institut Laue-Langevin, a world-leading neutron source, we identify four typical collaboration patterns, which reflect particular configurations of (dis)similarity between instrument scientists and users in terms of perceived expertise gap and co-development focus. Our findings suggest that the co-existence of multiple collaboration types within the same organisation plays an important role in the long-term success of LSRIs. In addition, we contend that dissimilarity can generate productive collaboration to the same extent as partner similarity; not only at the organisational level – co-existence of different types of collaborations across the LSRI, favouring the co-existence of a broad range of instrumentation – but also at the individual level – where instrument scientists benefit in terms of more productive collaborations over time despite the cost of learning involved.

Role of Academic Biobanks in Public-Private Partnerships in the European Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure Community.

Public-private partnerships (PPP) are an efficient means to advance scientific discoveries and boost the medical innovations needed to improve precision medicine. The increasing number and novel nature of such collaborations is keeping the biomedical field in constant flux. Here we provide an update on PPP development involving academic biobanks in the BBMRI community (the European Biobanking and BioMolecular Resources Research Infrastructure) and report the views on PPP of 20 key players from this field. The interviewed academic representants broadly show interest for their institution to establish PPP and initiate or partner with BBMRI expert centers. The results indicate that PPP has gained foothold in this area of biomedical research, with great promise to facilitate access to samples and data and to improve data interoperability and reproducibility.

Scientific collaboration in LSRIs: Collaboration types and policy implications (WITHDRAWN)

Over the past decades, Large Scale Research Infrastructures (LSRIs) serving as user-oriented experimental platforms have come to play a central role in public science policy. Collaborations between (permanent) instrument scientists and users are at the core of these organisations, yet knowledge about the nature of such collaborations and their development over time is scarce. Based on a qualitative study of scientists and their collaborations at Institut Laue-Langevin, a world-leading neutron source, we identify four ideal-typical collaboration patterns, which reflect particular configurations of (dis)similarity between instrument scientists and users. Our findings suggest that the co-existence of multiple collaboration types is important for the long-term success of LSRIs. Our study contributes to previous research by focusing on the process of science collaboration, by looking at collaboration in context, and by addressing a previously under-researched organisational context for collaborative science.

Securing Loosely-Coupled Collaboration in Cloud Environment through Dynamic Detection and Removal of Access Conflicts

Online collaboration service has become a popular offering of present day Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) clouds. It facilitates sharing of information among multiple participating domains and accessing them from remote locations. Owing to loosely-coupled nature of such collaborations, access request from a remote user is made in the form of a set of permissions. The cloud vendor maps the requested permissions into appropriate local roles in order to allow resource access. However, coexistence of such multiple simultaneous role activation requests may introduce conflicts which violate the principle of security. In this paper, we propose a distributed secure collaboration framework which enables collaborating domains to detect and remove these conflicts. Two features of our framework are: (i) it requires only local information, and (ii) it detects and removes conflicts on-the-fly. Formal proofs have been provided to establish the correctness of our approach. Experimental results and qualitative comparison with related work demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in terms of response time, thus addressing the scalability requirement of cloud services.

The Roles of University Researchers in a University-School Collaborative Action Research Project - A Chinese experience

Teacher research as an international movement since the 1970s has been advocated worldwide to promote school curriculum reform and the professionalization of school teachers. University-school collaborative action research is a new attempt to support school teachers who learn to do research in their classrooms while providing opportunities for university researcher to develop a better understanding of classroom practice with more effective strategies to support teacher change. Such collaborative research has been promoted in the recent curriculum reform in basic education in China. This paper reports on an action research project conducted by school teachers supported by university researchers in the Chinese context with a focus on examining the roles and gains of university researchers in this project. Data was collected through project meeting observations, questionnaires, interviews and participants’ reflective journals. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods were used respectively for analyzing the data collected. The purpose of this study is to understand better the nature of such collaborations and the gains as well as challenges on the part of university researchers so that implications can be drawn for establishing a sound university-school collaborative research body that promotes the professional learning of both parties.

Hospital Collaboration With Emergency Medical Services in the Care of Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction: Perspectives From Key Hospital Staff

Evidence suggests that active collaboration between hospitals and emergency medical services (EMS) is significantly associated with lower acute myocardial infarction mortality rates; however, the nature of such collaborations is not well understood. We seek to characterize views of key hospital staff about collaboration with EMS in the care of patients hospitalized with acute myocardial infarction. We performed an exploratory analysis of qualitative data previously collected from site visits and detailed interviews with 11 US hospitals that ranked in the top or bottom 5% of performance on 30-day risk-standardized acute myocardial infarction mortality rates, using Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data from 2005 to 2007. We selected all codes from the previous analysis in which EMS was most likely to have been discussed. A multidisciplinary team analyzed the data with the constant comparative method to generate recurrent themes. Both higher- and lower-performing hospitals reported that EMS is critical to the provision of timely care for patients with acute myocardial infarction. However, close collaborative relationships with EMS were more apparent in the higher-performing hospitals, which demonstrated specific investment in and attention to EMS through respect for EMS as valued professionals and colleagues, strong communication and coordination with EMS and active engagement of EMS in hospital acute myocardial infarction quality improvement efforts. Hospital staff from higher-performing hospitals described broad, multifaceted strategies to support collaboration with EMS in providing acute myocardial infarction care. The association of these strategies with hospital performance should be tested quantitatively in a larger representative study.

Abstract 246: Emergency Medical Services and Hospital Collaboration in the Care of Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction

Background: High quality emergency medical services (EMS) care is important for the care of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Evidence suggests that active collaboration between EMS and hospital clinicians caring for patients with AMI is significantly associated with AMI mortality rates; however, the nature of such collaborations has not been examined. We sought to understand collaborations between EMS and hospitals in the care of patients hospitalized with AMI. Methods: We performed a qualitative study of key clinical and administrative hospital staff most closely involved with AMI care. We arrayed hospitals based on their 30-day risk-standardized AMI mortality rates (RSMRs) using Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data from 2005-2007. We selected hospitals that ranked in the top 5% and bottom 5% of performance for both years. We conducted site visits and in-depth interviews (n=158) until successive site visits generated no new concepts, which occurred after 11 site visits. A multidisciplinary team analyzed the data using the constant comparative method to generate recurrent themes. Atlas Ti software facilitated data organization and retrieval. Results: Although both high and low performing hospitals perceived that EMS plays an important role in AMI care, high performing hospitals reported a close collaborative relationship that differed in nature and intensity from that described by the low performers in several aspects: 1) high level of respect for EMS as valued professionals and colleagues; 2) investment in diverse strategies to facilitate communication between the hospital and EMS, such as employing a hospital-based EMS liaison to provide training and support to prehospital providers and to ensure smooth and timely flow of information; and 3) active engagement of EMS in AMI care quality improvement efforts, including providing data feedback to EMS agencies on their performance. Conclusion: The relationship between EMS and the AMI care teams differed between high and low performing hospitals, with the high performing hospitals describing multifaceted strategies to support collaboration with EMS in providing AMI care. These strategies may be useful for hospitals seeking to improve the care of patients with AMI.

Collaborative writing: Product, process, and students’ reflections

Although pair and group work are commonly used in language classrooms, very few studies have investigated the nature of such collaboration when students produce a jointly written text. This study set out to investigate collaborative writing. The study was classroom based, and the participants (23) were adult ESL students completing degree courses. Students were given a choice to write in pairs or individually. Although most chose to work in pairs, some chose to work individually. All pair work was audiotaped and all completed texts collected. All pairs were also interviewed after class. The study compared texts produced by pairs with those produced by individual learners and investigated the nature of the writing processes evident in the pair talk. The study also elicited the learners’ reflections on the experience of collaborative writing. The study found that pairs produced shorter but better texts in terms of task fulfilment, grammatical accuracy, and complexity. Collaboration afforded students the opportunity to pool ideas and provide each other with feedback. Most students were positive about the experience, although some did express some reservations about collaborative writing.