Bench to Bedside -- Discussion Jim Herbsleb CMU jdh@cs.cmu.edu

Outline Kudos Pick a few nits Concluding thoughts

Kudos Selection of AIDS research as subject of collaboratory Inherently multi-disciplinary (virologists, pathologists, immunologists, etc.) Bridging communities (“bench to bedside”) Speed is important Systematic preparation Collaboration readiness Tool selection based on interviews -- address problems that are real to the participants Training, infrastructure Likely sped up adoption Collection of both usage and outcome data

Benefits of Collaboratory Clearly facilitated some existing collaborations Apparently led to increase in cross-site publications Sped up some tasks (e.g., developing protocol) Mentoring junior faculty

Some Nits Non-human primate researchers?? I found the presentation of results rather confusing Did increased number of collaborations come from recognizing need/opportunity more than availability of tools? Some clear summary of before/after would be really helpful, e.g., contingency table of sites by sites, counts of collaborations before, after Statistical modeling to see if introduction of collaboratory introduces more cross-site collaborations (may need to add in conference, workshop papers, etc, to get numbers up) Relationship of collaboratory use to new cross-site collaborations Comparison of cross-site collaboration with CFARs without Collaboratory?

Couple More Nits Effect on clinicians? How did multi-site collaboration on GLR CFAR happen without tools? What were the problems, how were they solved or worked around? How were later collaborations different? Collaboration readiness -- what did the reported results actually mean? There were 4 same-site, 4 cross-site, and many anticipated cross-site collaborations If competitiveness/complementarity is so important, why doesn’t collaboration readiness focus on this?

Issues Tool selection -- give participants exactly what they want? (fax, desktop video, coercive counseling for colleagues) Do they know what will be useful? E.g., did they ask for web site with the specific functionality, e-mail distribution lists? Seem to have been used a lot. Will they actually use what would actually be useful? (e.g., perception of “hallway conversation,” mixed record of chat, IM, MUD use)

Hypothesis -- distance matters less over time Hypothesis -- distance matters less over time? (Early in relationship, early in work) Group behavior changes greatly over time (e.g., “Time Matters,” Joe McGrath) Nearly absolute barrier to initiating something Early interactions create structure (e.g., identification of mutual interests, plans, awareness of style, expertise, etc.) that form framework for later communication After FTF, other communication works better over distance Software development -- early activities are the most collaborative After some critical mass of development, open source becomes possible Need collaboration tools to support some sort of life cycle? How, in detail, did new collaborations progress in CFAR?

Understanding Dependencies in Work Van de Ven, organizational assessments Org theory -- information processing, certainty, stability, etc., influences how much communication is needed, how well other mechanisms (e.g., bureaucracy) work Easy to identify “hard” dependencies, e.g., producer-consumer, shared resources But how do you systematically identify and support “soft” dependencies? E.g., A and B should really keep in touch on this issue Would be potentially useful part of collaboration readiness