Should “technology” be included in the Committee Charge?

[Jacob Barhak]

Lealem is right, we do have to make a decision in the next couple of weeks since we plan to get more exposure.

Lealem is taking the conservative approach and again explains his position well. It all makes sense. He is right, there are constraints associated with innovation such as finance issues.
Yet my experience is that overly conservative approaches that view credibility as "we trust only what was proven in the past for a long time" turn to over stagnation and complacency. I can point towards specific examples. I suggest a healthier approach that takes technology/innovation into account when considering credibility - incorporating the risks and benefits.

Yet Lealem is right, writing more about this further may be less effective. Our positions are clear and it would be more interesting to see what the rest of the committee members think. I urge the rest of the members to take a more active part in this discussion.

[Joy Ku]

I also vote for option 1. As Donna says, technology can be touched upon indirectly as part of the Committee's work, but I think we should keep the focus on our original mandate.

[Grace Peng]

Hi Everyone,
In order for me to better understand the context, can you provide a draft of what Option 2 might look like? Technology is such a broad word. For example, all programs at NIBIB are categorized under technology development; including modeling, analysis and simulation.
Thanks,
Grace

[Lealem Mulugeta]

In order for me to better understand the context, can you provide a draft of what Option 2 might look like? Technology is such a broad word. For example, all programs at NIBIB are categorized under technology development; including modeling, analysis and simulation.

I personally see it being difficult to come up with a draft for option 2 at this point in time because there is not a clear agreement of what technology means to the committee. So far the two definitions that have been proposed include: hardware, software, algorithms, and innovative game changing technologies (I paraphrase). The advocacy for technology largely started with "innovative" technologies like HPC; which is hardware technology. I think inclusion of hardware or the concept of "innovation" into our mission statement presents the risk of diverging and increasing the difficulty of already lofty objective the Committee has taken on.

With that said, I can see how NIBIB may categorize modeling, analysis and simulation as technologies. In this light, I think Donna and Joy's point of going with Option 1 and touching on technology indirectly as part of the Committee's work is in alignment with this. I am also in support of this.

[Ahmet Erdemir]

I vote for Option 2: Add "technology" in Committee charges blended with an existing charge balancing the emphasis.

I recognize technology (hardware, software, algorithms) mainly as a tool to facilitate establishing credibility, essentially increasing the efficiency of the path we take to establish credibility. For example, one can use a version control system (subversion, git, etc.) to keep track of their model development process or they can do version control manually, i.e., labeling files, adding initials of different developers, timestamps, etc. in the filenames or within the comments of modeling markup as change notes. While both paths may result in establishing the same credibility, the former exploits technology to streamline the process and the latter introduces points of errors, which can be prevented. By providing information on the utility of technology for establishing credibility, the Committee may be of great help to modeling and simulation practicioners, who may not be aware of existing technologies, which we consider commodity.

A disruptive technology, beyond facilitating but enabling credibility, is related to development of technologies to access information from the physiological system that we would not be able to before. For example, if one develops a hardware to measure muscle forces on live subjects, the credibility process of musculoskeletal modeling (and its use) will significantly change. For the first time a direct validation of muscle force prediction can be accomplished rather than relying indirect measurements or significantly simplified scenarios.

All being said, I do not think technology should be a separate charge as this may be distracting. Rather, it can be blended with the promotion of good practice of credibility; including technology included in one Committee charge as " to propose guidelines, procedures, and technologies for credible practice".

Best,

Ahmet

[David Eckmann]

I appreciate Grace's request for a description of Option 2, and we should give it some serious thought. There is no doubt in my mind that advancing technologies also give us newer and better resources to perform more advanced simulation and modeling, so these aspects are obviously intertwined. Nonetheless, I do not think that the work of this committee should extend explicitly into the inclusion of technology because it will dilute our already rather extensive purpose in focusing exclusively (not primarily) on modeling/simulation. Still it would be healthy for us to use this forum to generate some simple guidelines for what an Option 2 might look like - i.e., provide the framework - for purposes of charging another committee/working group/task force with aligning these different aspects of NIBIB's categorization of modeling, analysis and simulation under the umbrella of "technologies." We need to stick with Option 1 but let's work on outlining the technology piece that can be developed and matured by a parallel effort.

[Jeff Bischoff]

Ahmet's approach makes a lot of sense to me; it provides some space to talk about technologies, when appropriate, but not to the point of distracting from focusing strongly on credibility. Excessively describing, advocating, or proposing particular technologies seems like a rabbit trail (and for purposes of substantive technology review, the current crowd, myself included, may not be the best roster anyway).

[C. Anthony Hunt]

I concur with David Eckmann.

If the decision is Option One, then I suggest including a statement (somewhere) that says something like, "the charge does not extend to technologies because…"

[Lu Tian]

I prefer option 1, which seems to be the simplest solution.

[Grace Peng]

Actually, my original comment was written in hopes that someone will re-state the current committee charge, so we can suggest edits to it as we continue this discussion. It helps to have the strawman in front of us. Thanks - Grace