Matheson-Cooper Report: The First Roadmap to the
Clinical Translational Science Awards

Don E. Detmer, MD, MA
President and CEO, American Medical Informatics Association, Bethesda, MD
Professor of Medical Education, Department of Public Health Sciences,
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Whenever something ‘new’ comes along in academic health centers, there is invariably a tendency on the part of some younger faculty and/or newly minted administrators to declare the latest development to be a unique innovation for which they are enthusiastic and at times a bit smug. The recent innovation of Clinical Translational Science Awards (CTSAs), a terrific component of the NIH Roadmap, has forced a number of centers across the land to adopt a perspective of their entire enterprise, at least if they expect to get funded, and include a plan that underpins their institutional ‘connectivity’ with a information technology/informatics infrastructure.

Having been the happy principal investigator of an IAIMS grant at the University of Virginia in the early 1990s, I see the fingerprints of the Matheson-Cooper Report all over a number of the most successful proposals to the CTSA program. Of course, the Matheson-Cooper report came along when the vision of what computing was to become was scarcely imaginable, certainly in terms of the Internet. However, bringing the enterprise together is most importantly a human activity and not a technical one and the report galvanized the thinking and actions of those capable of a more holistic vision of the future. It is a great personal pleasure that I’ve not only benefited from the Matheson-Cooper report but that my life has been graced through a friendship of both of its authors.

February 10, 2008
Branch Point Farm, White Hall, VA