Ensemble Program Overview
Vision
To leverage clinical and translational research to improve patient/community health and health care. This follows directly from the overarching CTSI mission to make the best medicine better, and to get more treatments to more patients, more quickly.
Mission
The Ensemble Program’s mission is to integrate clinical and translational research faculty, the community of stakeholders, and health system representatives into highly innovative and efficient teams to address the unmet clinical needs of our patients and our communities. As shown in the figure (“Functional Relationship”), such unmet needs may emanate from the clinic, community, and basic science laboratory. This design allows for identification of real/existent unsolved clinical problems and provides the opportunity to use multidisciplinary team science to develop solutions.
Functional Relationship of Ensemble, Unmet Patient Medical Need with the Clinic, Community of Stakeholders, and Basic Science Research Laboratory
Purpose & Aim
The Ensemble Program aims to unite diverse stakeholders to address unmet clinical needs and translate research into practice. By including both traditional and non-traditional team members, the program seeks to democratize research participation. Teams collaborate to form Pre-Ensemble groups, attend meetings, share knowledge, and develop research questions and protocols to resolve specific patient medical needs. Additional expertise is recruited as necessary.
Products & Feedback
Ensemble outcomes are “products” that could be a device, process, medication, assay, biomarker, clinical trial, survey tool, questionnaire, extramural grant, scholarly publication, etc. The special nature of Ensemble composition allows for products to receive feedback from the community, clinic, or basic science lab.
Process
A Pre-Ensemble team consists of one or more investigators or a greater number of team members addressing an unmet medical need. Formed in response to funding opportunities or organically, these teams collaborate to submit an Ensemble proposal for review by CTSI committees. If approved for funding, they become "Ensembles."
A CTSI Project Manager supports each team during the "Pre-Ensemble" stage and throughout Ensemble formation, proposal development, and research. Successful proposals must: (a) highlight the unmet patient medical need, (b) identify a diverse team with various resources (e.g., patient cohorts, community partners), and
(c) discuss potential research outcomes.
The research is supported through our Function/Partner integration strategy, which includes contributions by any relevant CTSI function or structure (e.g., Clinical Trials Office; Adult Translational Research Unit; Community Engagement Consultation Service; Integrating Special Populations; Clinical Research Data Warehouse, BERD; or the CTSI/MSOE Deep Learning Initiative, etc.).
Integrated Clinical and Research Ensemble Clusters
Ensemble RFAs are open to forming Pre-Ensembles for unmet patient medical needs. In September 2021, the Ensemble Function collaborated with the Department of Medicine's Cardiovascular Academic Initiative to issue an RFA for "Focused Ensembles" targeting cardiology-related needs. The approved Ensembles form an Integrated Clinical and Research Cluster, where each Ensemble addresses different issues within cardiology. These are supported by a senior investigator known as a "translationist," with Michael Widlansky, MD, MPH, serving as the director and translationist for this Ensemble Cluster.
Ensemble Teams
Ensemble membership is not limited to only MCW faculty and staff, and participation from our partner institutions and other academic institutions is highly encouraged. While most active team members are associated with MCW, there are members from all 8 partner institutions and other academic and community organizations. Of note, because team members can be affiliated with more than one institution, the total number for institutional representation (n=306) is greater than the number of Unique Active Investigators (n=209).
Cumulative Institutional and Departmental Representation on Individual Teams
Through inter-institutional networking, the Ensemble Program, since inception, has cumulatively included representation from 38 institutions and 95 unique departments, among all those institutions. Team composition ranges from one to eight institutions per team with an average of two institutions represented on each team. Additionally, an average of 5 different departments are represented per team, ranging from one to 13 departments per team.
