Innovation and Quality Unit
Innovation and Quality Unit
Dr. Kim directs the Innovation and Quality (IQ) Unit, a team of statisticians, database managers, programmers, nurses, and coordinators that support Departmental quality improvement initiatives and research efforts by the faculty. This team creates databases, obtains accurate and valid clinical data, performs analyses, generates reliable reports, and maintains regulatory compliance. The IQ unit communicates regularly with the hospital coding team, the revenue cycle team, and other staff in order to help us understand the rules of coding and the strict guidelines set by the federal government. They also monitor mortality and complication rates.
In addition to work done on performance monitoring and improvement, the IQ unis assists research in two ways. First, the IQ unit maintains the Neuroscience Research Repository (or NRR), under the direction of Georgene Hergenroeder. The NRR is a prospective database and sample bank created to collect patient information and samples for current and future neuroscience research.
The NRR team enrolls all admitted patients prospectively. Consents allows the NRR to gather clinically recorded admission data and longitudinal data for up to an additional 15 years after discharge. In addition, discarded samples such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid and tissue (e.g. tumors) can be taken and stored. Family members of select groups of patients will also be approached for enrollment. This is a large biobank that couples bio-samples with clinical data. In addition, our approach is to treat each patient as a research subject, and collect data as part of routine patient care.
Samples and data are labeled with a study code to maintain confidentiality. Samples and data are maintained in secure, limited-access environments with back-up/redundancy procedures in place. Faculty investigators can request samples which are distributed after approval from the Neurosurgery Scientific Review Committee and the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS). These samples are specifically prepared and maintain for genomic and proteomic analyses.
A second IQ team research function is to assist in conducting clinical trials. Research assistants are in the hospital 24/7, not only to enroll patients into the NRR and gather samples, but also to help identify, enroll, and randomize patients into acute clinical trials. For example, the IQ team supports the “HOPES” trial, a multicenter, randomized clinical trial investigating the effect of HypOthermia for Patients requiring Evacuation of Subdural Hematoma (PI: Dong Kim). HOPES is a prospective, controlled, multi-center trial that aims to test whether treating TBI patients with hypothermia prior to surgical evacuation of a subdural hematoma improves their long-term prognosis. HOPES has over 22 participating sites in the United States and Japan, and will test the hypothesis that hypothermia reduces the reperfusion injury that can occur with hematoma evacuation, improving outcomes.
Team Members
Dong H. Kim, M.D., Principal Investigator
John H. Hagan, Ph.D., Co-Investigator
Pramod Dash, Ph.D., Co-Investigator
Yanning Rui, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Zhun Xu, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Krista Qualmann, M.S., C.G.C., Genetic Counselor
Lisa Schmitt, R.N., Nurse Manager
Jacob Cammarata, R.N., Research Nurse
Amish Amin, R.N., Research Nurse
Rita Cole, DPT, Physical Therapist
Airu Niu, Ph.D., Research Assistant
IQ Program Personnel
Dong H. Kim, M.D., Principal Investigator
Georgene Hergenroeder, M.H.A., R.N., Co-Investigator
Statistics and Analytics
Miriam Morales
Chirag Shah
Alex Liu
Joanna O’Leary, Ph.D.
Rahil Tai, M.D.
Senior Research Nurses
Lisa Schmitt, R.N., Nurse Manager
Marcia Kerr, R.N., Pediatric Studies
Research Coordinators/Assistants
Mariel Arheler
Amanda Brisco
Greg Lu, M.D.
Mayank Rao
Nasim Rezanejad, M.D.
Aditya Sanzgiri
Daniel Saenz, M.S.
Glenda Torres
Genetics
Krista Qualmann, Genetic Couselor