STEMSOFT was proud to take part in the 2020 TCT | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT and CIBMTR this past month in Orlando, FL. The STEMSOFT team onsite included (in photo left to right) Simon Robinson, Nicole Waidman, Geoff Browne, and David Barwin.
We were proud to be an active participant in this year’s event which included:
- A Booth within the main Exhibit Hall
- Two presentations during the IT & Informatics Meeting:
- One on “Challenges, Successes and Lessons Learned from Implementing HCT/CT Data Exchange Solutions”,
- And a second titled “Data Literacy for Cell Therapy”
The STEMSOFT booth welcomed numerous clients and potential new clients throughout the event. This space provided our team with an opportunity to connect face-to-face with many of our users to help address your questions while also allowing us to engage in dialog that can help spark future product enhancements.
On Feb. 20, 2020 David Barwin, STEMSOFT’s Product Director, took the podium at the vendor showcase during the IT & Informatics Meeting on “Challenges, Successes and Lessons Learned from Implementing HCT/CT Data Exchange Solutions”. His talk conveyed that, in his viewpoint, there are three critical business problems that the community needs to address:
- The data management role itself, and the need for us to reframe the conversation so it is less about managing headcount and more about increasing the visibility of the role. We need to recognize that we are often speaking about the creation of new data and metadata, or data about data, that does not exist anywhere else in the hospital ecosystem.
- Adjusting our expectations on rule-based data mappings. If we accept that there is a relatively small amount of direct data that can be mapped, and that the majority of the content needed is actually derived data that doesn’t necessarily get stored, we can quickly see how rule-based data mapping does not scale.
- Keeping up with rapid change. It is possible that we could ask fewer questions but get more actual data if we changed the lens through which we view the world and worked on better standardization?
In summary, David would like to see facilities empower data managers to do self-serve analytics, build their own data sets, and crowd source data entry. He also sees FHIR integration and support as the way of the future for this industry and encourages everyone to ask your IT groups where they are at with building out and provisioning FHIR throughout the hospital ecosystem.
Geoff Browne, STEMSOFT’s Managing Director, spoke on the same day as part of the IT & Informatics Meeting as well, but with a focus on data literacy in cell therapy. His talk began by comparing green chilli production in New Mexico with the task of automating cell therapy laboratory and clinical data – imploring facilities to invest in data literacy within their staff. He highlighted six subjects about which a facility should be literate: Derived data are data; standards require work, but they are worth it; resolution matters; data managers need to be curators and not typists; embrace DevOps; and don’t wait for any vendor to save you.
If you would like to talk further with either of these presenters regarding the above topics please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.