August 5, 2019

Several attendees from the Working Group got together after the Washington DC meeting in 2016 and started applying for grants to fund this work. The first (a BAA to the Dept. of Defense) was not successful, but a second proposal was. We responded to an RFA on precision management of TBI and finally got the award in June (2019). The project involves creating standards for “data management” in neurocritical care to include nomenclature, annotations, archiving, and communications. This effort will greatly help research trials. Another phase of the project is to create methods to easily “plug-in” analytic applications whether for data cleaning, detection of events, or prediction. We will be working closely with the BOOST3 and SDII trials to apply our work. This work can only be done with a wide group of stakeholders and by leveraging prior work. We invite you to join the team.

November 18, 2015

We are pleased to announce the endorsement of the Working Group by the Brain Trauma Foundation.   For 30 years, the Brain Trauma Foundation has been conducting innovative clinical research and developing evidence-based guidelines that improve outcomes for the millions of people who suffer from traumatic brain injuries every year. From concussion to coma, Brain Trauma Foundation’s expertise allows us to better educate athletes, coaches, families, and medical professionals for improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.  BTF’s Guidelines for the Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury have been a guiding light in TBI care for the past 20 years.

November 13, 2015

The second TED meeting was held on November 9-10 in Napa, California.  Better designed clinical trials leading to the first successful treatments for traumatic brain injury are the goals of the TBI Endpoints Development (TED) Initiative.  See https://tbiendpoints.ucsf.edu/.  TED is part of the TRACK-TBI project.  The meeting was led by Dr. Geoff Manley (UCSF) and participants were from academia, industry, and government.  Representatives from the FDA were present to ensure the pathway to clinical use is considered up front in the design of therapeutic agents and devices.

Our Working Group meeting theme of improving data collection in clinical trials was echoed in the Clinical Breakout session.  It is gaining traction and possibly some funding proposals.

November 5, 2015

Dr. Anna Rodriguez presented a poster at the Connected Health 2015 Symposium in Boston, October 29-30.  The poster was titled Review of Medical Device Connectivity in Neurocritical Care.  To our knowledge, it is the first publication that reviews the quality of medical device communications.  On the last day of the meeting, Anna was approached by an editor encouraging her to submit the full version of the paper to one of his journals.  We will provide an update on further publications.

You can download the poster and the associated paper in the Documents section of this website.

October 15, 2015

The inaugural meeting of the Working Group was held on Tuesday, October 6 the day before the start of the annual meeting of the Neurocritical Care Society in Scottsdale, AZ.  About 60 people packed a small room at the start of the meeting and about the same were there at the end of the 6.5 hour meeting…which was a testament to their interest in the topic.  Two informal breakfast meetings were held in the days following to digest some of the discussion and formulate next steps.  A summary of the meeting will be posted soon.

August 5, 2015
We are pleased to announce that One Mind (www.onemind.org) has officially endorsed our Working Group and its mission. Our two organizations are closely aligned in what we attempt to accomplish. The slogan on their website “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used when we created them” applies to both of us. We look forward to their participation in our Forums and at our meetings.

July 6, 2015
For several years Draper Labs (Cambridge, MA), under the leadership of Len Polizzotto, organized a group of experts in neurocritical care and informatics for the purpose of addressing many of the problems seen in this field. The iniative, called IMEDS, developed an architecture and concepts to improve informatics in neurocritical care.

Due to a change in focus at Draper Labs, they will no longer be leading the IMEDS project and have turned it over to the Working Group to continue the development of this work. Draper personnel will continue to be involved through the Working Group.

We welcome the IMEDS group.

October 7-10, 2015, Scottsdale, AZ

The Neurocritical Care Society (NCS) is a multidisciplinary, international organization whose mission is to improve outcomes for patients with life-threatening neurological illnesses. Through each annual meeting, consistent efforts are made towards the discovery and communication of the highest quality of care for patients with critical neurological conditions throughout the world.

The theme of this year’s meeting will be: “Back to the Future.”

For meeting information, please visit: Neurocritical Care Society