Pilot Studies Component

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Project Summary—Administrative Oversight The mission of the Center for Smart Use of Technologies to Assess Real-World Outcomes (C-STAR) is to serve as a unique resource to the national rehabilitation research community. In order to maximize our ability to advance rehabilitation research and improve outcomes for persons with disability, we will create an agile, responsive, and efficient administrative structure that optimizes our ability to provide valuable expertise and resources to researchers and clinicians, including efficient collaboration with other Centers. Our overall goal is to create an organizational structure that allows efficient managerial oversight, clearly defines the responsibilities of key personnel, and provides easy access to C-STAR resources and expertise. Specifically, we will create a pilot program project that solicits applications from a diverse population of researchers, provide collaborative learning opportunities to the research community, develop technologies to advance the ability to measure real-world outcomes, market C-STAR nationally through social media and other unique resources, and solicit biennial input from an independent advisory board of stakeholders. We have assigned experienced leadership to manage each of the Center components: cores, didactic interactions, and hands on interactions. An Executive Committee, comprising Core directors, the principal investigators, and the pilot project committee chair, will meet monthly to evaluate progress, address problems, and document activities and outputs. The Executive Committee will also monitor Center budgets and key personnel effort to ensure that Center resources are used efficiently and distributed effectively among various Center activities. On an ad hoc basis, C-STAR personnel will also participate in (1) didactic efforts, (2) programs such as IdeaLabs in which clinicians and researchers explore new ideas in structured “white board” sessions, and pilot project reviews, and (3) evaluation and mentoring of pilot studies. The guiding strategy used to create our core leadership was to choose co-directors who are accomplished professionals, representing both Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (SRAlab) and Northwestern University (NU), and encompass a diversity of research experience and gender. Our core directors will serve as a point-of-contact for C-STAR inquiries, assist in the reviewing of pilot projects, participate in IdeaLabs and draw appropriate colleagues into these reviews, and feed new technology development ideas into the technology core. All core directors have leadership experience; some are very senior researchers with extensive experience. We are also proposing a novel budgeting model, based on our previous experience with infrastructure grants, in which cores are often either under- or over-utilized. We propose use of the “value based” accounting (VBA) method in which funds are shifted, as needed, to the appropriate core. Finally, C-STAR will have close relationships with industry partners, ranging from the more traditional device and technical support provided by most companies to the very substantial data housing and computational environment.