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10.2.2.2
Establishing Career Paths for Translational Professionals
and Training a Multi-faceted Workforce (Tailoring Training
to Roles and Responsibilities)
A key element that will need to be addressed moving forward is the development
and growth of a dedicated workforce trained to enable translational science and
practice. Currently professionals working in the transitional fi eld tend to have
expertise on one or another and of the translational spectrum. The same is typically
true for informatics and IT professionals. In the future those working at the intersec-
tion of translational science will need to grow and their training to include formal
knowledge in a variety of realms as well as in the methodologies necessary to enable
team science. Furthermore, incentives including funding for career paths and oppor-
tunities for advancement of promotion will need to be aligned much better than they
are today in order to recognize the value of those working to advance translational
science and the informatics aspects therein, in particular. Only by creating attractive
structures and career paths with visible success stories that will motivate trainees to
enter the fi eld will we overcome the current severe shortage and experts needed to
achieve the vision laid out herein.
In addition to training dedicated professionals in this area, those who will con-
tinue to work on opposite ends of the translational spectrum must also be educated
as they will be critical members of the translational workforce. Indeed, there is a
need to educate learners at varying levels of intensity based upon their stage of
training, their role in the research and informatics/IT enterprise, and their career
goals. A description of the varying types of learners and the related types of train-
ing that would likely be relevant/of interest to such groups of learners is depicted
in Table
10.1
. As the chart depicts using different size marks, learners in each
category on the left may opt for more or less intensive training, but we have indi-
cated with the large “
X
” those offerings we think most appropriate to each type.
Already, multi-week courses and tutorials have been developed to start addressing
this need [
21
].
Table 10.1
Educational program applicability by learner stage/role
Educational program
Multi- week
course
Certifi cate
program
Master's
degree
Learner stage/role
Tutorial
Student/resident, clinicians, faculty,
leadership
X
x
Investigators, research staff, or
informatician liaisons
x
X
x
Informatician, investigator, or research
staff who will use or support Research
Informatics
x
X
x
Informatician with Research Informatics
career focus
x
X
X
= most applicable; x = possibly applicable
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