Data continues to be at the heart of the IT and Informatics Track of the Tandem Meetings | Transplantation & Cellular Therapy Meetings of ASTCT® and CIBMTR®. Data standardization and interoperability, and the automation of data acquisition and exchange between transplant centers and the CIBMTR for research purposes will be recurring themes throughout the Feb. 13 track agenda in Honolulu.

That includes the Physician Keynote: Developing an Institutional Data Strategy to Maximize Data Reusability in Transplant and Cellular Therapy, delivered by Wayne Liang, MD, MS, at 8:45 a.m. and the Technical Keynote: Data for the Common Good: Transforming Health through Data, delivered by Sam Volchenboum, MD, PhD, MS, at 9:30 a.m.

“We have a forward-looking keynote from an oncologist who practices in transplant and cellular therapy and who is also an informatician. We also have a technical keynote to provide different perspectives on where this domain is headed, so with each year, we continue to attract thought leaders with deep and very specific knowledge in this domain,” said Erik Bergman, MBA, MS, senior director of IT for CIBMTR and one of the track planners.

Dr. Liang, who serves as vice chair on the ASTCT Committee on Informatics, is an assistant professor of pediatrics, a pediatric blood and marrow transplant physician, and director of informatics education and outreach at Aflac Cancer & Blood Disorders Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University. His research centers on the development, implementation, and evaluation of electronic tools and data standards to support clinical care delivery, operations, and research in pediatrics, hematology, oncology, and transplantation and cellular therapy.

Dr. Volchenboum is a professor of pediatrics and a pediatric oncologist at the University of Chicago. His lab group, Data for the Common Good, works on lowering barriers to data sharing worldwide.

Sharing real-world experiences is one of the cornerstones of the IT and Informatics Track and can be found in virtually every session, but it takes center stage in Panel Session: Strategies in Healthcare Data Automation at 11 a.m. and Center Abstracts/Case Studies at 1:15 p.m.

“These abstracts exemplify what technology and informatic solutions centers are implementing and what they’ve learned,” Bergman said. “It’s about sharing what’s successful for them and can be adapted for other centers.”

Automating the management of data is one of the keys to reducing burden and the time from data acquisition to data use. CIBMTR IT Directors Matt Prestegaard and Erik Bergman will facilitate a session on data automation, the operationalization of which has evolved from CIBMTR’s Data Transformation Initiative. The session will include lessons learned from two centers, the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Medicine, that have embarked on these automations using the CIBMTR Reporting Application.  NMDP will foreshadow an expanded utility of this application, and attendees will gain a glimpse of CIBMTR’s plans to transform its data and systems to support its future needs and the needs of the community.

With the recent proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) in many sectors, track planner Todd Schei, program and information systems manager for the Medical College of Wisconsin, said AI is likely to be included in discussions throughout the day.

The expertise of the featured speakers fosters a high-quality exchange of ideas.

IT and Informatics Track Agenda

The most up-to-date IT and Informatics Track agenda and the full 2025 Tandem Meetings program are available on the online meeting platform. All IT and Informatics Track sessions take place in Room 311 of the Hawaiʻi Convention Center, unless noted otherwise.

Thursday, Feb. 13

• 8-8:30 a.m. – Meet and Greet
• 8:30-8:45 a.m. – Welcome & ASTCT Updates
• 8:45-9:30 a.m. – Physician Keynote: Developing an Institutional Data Strategy to Maximize Data Reusability in Transplant and Cellular Therapy
• 9:30-10 a.m. – Technical Keynote: Data for the Common Good: Transforming Health through Data
• 10-10:30 a.m. – Morning Break, Exhibit Hall 2
• 10:30-11 a.m. – CIBMTR Data Access & Sharing
• 11 a.m. -noon – Panel Session: Strategies in Healthcare Data Automation
• noon-1:15 p.m. – Lunch, Exhibit Hall 2
• 1:15-2:15 p.m. – Center Abstracts/Case Studies
• 2:15-3 p.m. – CIBMTR Data Automation
• 3-3:30 p.m.  – Afternoon Break, Level 3 Concourse
• 3:30-4 p.m. – Epic/User Group Presentation
• 4-4:30 p.m. – Wrap Up