Radiology Research Operations
Use this skill to convert an approved or otherwise frozen scientific plan into a traceable operating system. It owns RACI, dependencies, site readiness, throughput, resource capacity, operational registers, freezes, pause/termination and closeout. It does not decide the scientific question, approve research, execute institutional management authority or claim that a plan was actually run.
Operating modes
| Mode | Use when | Primary result |
|---|---|---|
startup | a protocol or project is preparing to open | operating charter, RACI, critical path and readiness gates |
active-control | recruitment, acquisition, annotation, assays or analysis are under way | status dashboard, variance, forecast, actions and evidence |
recovery | a milestone, site, resource, quality or dependency is failing | root constraint, recovery options, decision deadline and claim consequence |
freeze-release | a cohort, labels, analysis set, model, evidence or manuscript package must be frozen/released | versioned freeze criteria, authorization, manifest and exception ledger |
post-award-funder-reporting | an awarded project has conditions, amendments, annual/interim/final reports or sponsor deliverables | award-term passport, obligation/evidence crosswalk, reporting package state and authorized funder-action handoff |
pause-stop-closeout | the project pauses, terminates or completes | safety/access handoff, preservation, reconciliation, closure and reusable lessons |
For the control model and registers read references/operations-control-model.md. For multicentre and modality-specific readiness read references/site-readiness-and-imaging-operations.md. For risks, changes, freezes and closeout read references/risk-change-freeze-and-closeout.md. Consult references/source-registry.md before policy-facing advice; clinical-trial sources are quality frameworks only when the project is outside their actual scope.
Input passport
Record:
project/study ID | operating mode | scientific protocol/SAP/design digest and owner | study family and intended claim | sites/modalities/work packages | current approvals/contracts/access evidence | start/end and decision milestones | staffing/equipment/assays/compute/budget constraints | critical-to- quality factors | data/annotation/acquisition/analysis freeze states | current risks/issues/deviations | local accountable roles | artifact locations | authority for any update or external action.
Scientific design, ethics, contracts, budget approval, site activation and institutional assignments
are author-only or institution-only facts. Use NOT_EVIDENCED until the relevant record is inspected.
Advisory work is read-only; do not open a site, alter a schedule, assign personnel, spend funds,
contact collaborators or change a protocol without explicit authority.
Operational evidence states
Use PLANNED, EVIDENCED_READY, ACTIVE, AT_RISK, BLOCKED, FROZEN, PAUSED,
TERMINATED or CLOSED. A calendar date, verbal assurance, percentage-complete estimate or green
dashboard does not establish readiness. Every state cites a record, owner and checked date.
Post-award funder-reporting boundary
For post-award-funder-reporting, bind one exact award and reporting period:
funder/mechanism/cycle/award ID | notice and award-term versions | institutional implementation route | reporting period/deadline/time zone | approved aims/protocol/SAP/budget/timeline versions | conditions and prior amendments | required fields/files/attachments | actual milestone/deliverable evidence and exact locators | deviations/issues/risks | ethics/data/sharing/publication states | scientific owner approvals | institutional/funder action owner.
Use the current award notice, terms, amendment history, reporting instructions and institutional research-office route. A prior application, generic funder guide, planned milestone or percent-complete estimate is not evidence that a deliverable was achieved or accepted.
- Annual/interim/final reports: map every funder field and deliverable to a source artifact, reporting period, responsible owner and unresolved fact. Research operations assembles and tracks the package; the original scientific owner verifies methods, analyses, results and claims.
- Amendments: keep a proposed change, authorized amendment and actual protocol/operational deviation distinct. Never backdate approval or use a report narrative to normalize an unauthorized change. Propagate an approved change or unapproved deviation to every affected scientific artifact.
- Administrative and financial boundary: record award/budget/effort/contract states only from authoritative records. Do not certify expenditures, effort, compliance, continuation, acceptance or institutional/funder approval.
- External-action boundary: do not log in, upload, attest, contact the sponsor, request an
amendment or submit a report without explicit authority. The maximum machine state is
HUMAN_INSTITUTIONAL_FUNDER_ACTION_REQUIRED.
Use POST_AWARD_REPORT_INCOMPLETE when fields, sources or owners are missing and
POST_AWARD_REPORT_BLOCKED for a known overdue, authorization, compliance, scientific-validity or
unresolved-term blocker. Neither state permits invented completion evidence.
Required workflow
- Accept the scientific lock. Receive the question, protocol, estimand, measurement/QC, statistics, ethics and data-access decisions from their owners. Return unresolved science rather than repairing it as project management.
- Build the control book. Define work packages, deliverables, acceptance criteria, dependencies, RACI, decision rights and escalation paths. One work package has one accountable role; never invent the person or institutional authority.
- Compute the critical path and capacity. Map duration ranges, access lead times, throughput, bottlenecks, slack, external dependencies and resource limits. Separate calendar forecast from scientific sample-size requirements.
- Gate site/workstream readiness. Verify approvals, agreements, trained roles, equipment, acquisition/reconstruction versions, DICOM transfer/de-identification, reference standard, annotation, data schema, assay/compute capacity, safety and fallback. Use templates/site-readiness-freeze-register.md.
- Control execution. Compare planned and actual recruitment, follow-up, series acceptance, annotation, assay and run throughput. Record denominator, time window, evidence and forecast; never invent universal green/yellow/red thresholds.
- Maintain distinct registers. Keep future uncertainty (
risk), present blockage (issue), authorized choice (decision), planned modification (change), divergence from the frozen plan (deviation) and safety/security event (incident) separate. - Freeze and release deliberately. A freeze identifies scope, version, manifest, criteria, approver role, time and permitted exceptions. Any post-freeze change creates a new version and downstream-staleness handoff; it is not silently overwritten.
- Decide recovery, pause or termination. Tie actions to explicit thresholds and preserved claims. A scientifically invalid, unauthorized or unsafe study cannot be rescued by schedule compression.
- Close out. Reconcile participants/cases/specimens/images, data, annotations, equipment, finances, agreements, access, deviations, incidents, code/results, negative evidence and retention/destruction obligations. Use templates/research-operations-control-book.md.
- When funder reporting applies, build the award-term crosswalk. Reconcile the current award
conditions, approved changes, reporting-period evidence and required fields/files. Return every
scientific statement to its original owner for verification, then stop at
HUMAN_INSTITUTIONAL_FUNDER_ACTION_REQUIREDfor portal, attestation, approval or submission.
Stop and escalation gates
Return OPS_STOP_AND_ESCALATE for absent or expired approval/access; participant or staff safety
risk; uncontrolled PHI/security exposure; unqualified critical role; critical-to-quality process
without monitoring; material protocol deviation; unreconciled patient/exam/lesion/site identity;
protected-test or freeze breach; evidence destruction; or a contract/budget/personnel decision that
requires institutional authority.
State the responsible role and minimum evidence for release. The skill never activates a site, authorizes spending, instructs staff to continue blocked work, signs a delegation log, makes an HR or contracting decision, or declares institutional compliance.
Output contract
Operations passport and current evidence stateWork breakdown, RACI and decision-rights mapCritical path, capacity and dependency forecastwith uncertaintySite/workstream readiness matrixand exact blockersRecruitment/acquisition/annotation/assay/analysis throughput dashboardResource and budget-capacity map— quantities and constraints, not financial approvalRisk / issue / decision / change / deviation / incident registersFreeze/release manifest and exception ledgerRecovery, pause, termination or closeout decision packetPost-award obligation/report/amendment crosswalk— when applicable, with source versions, scientific-owner verification, unresolved blockers and human funder-action gateScientific, ethics, data, institutional and pipeline handoffs
Handoffs and non-ownership
- Question, estimand, validation and sample-size design ->
radiology-design/radiology-stats; acquisition and measurement gate ->radiology-acquisition-qc. - Annotation SOP ->
radiology-annotation; data identity, de-identification and access ->radiology-data; approvals and safety governance ->radiology-ethics. - Grant milestones and requested budget narrative ->
radiology-grant; whole-project scientific state and artifact staleness ->radiology-pipeline. - Pre-award call/proposal review, resubmission and final application-package audit ->
radiology-grant. After award, this skill owns obligation, amendment, annual/interim/final report and sponsor-deliverable tracking, while methods/results/claims remain with the original scientific owner and portal/acceptance authority remains with the institution/funder. - Silent/active deployment evidence, reader/impact design, site-acceptance criteria and production
monitoring science ->
radiology-translation; operations owns the approved plan's RACI, schedule, resources, dependencies, escalation and closeout, not its clinical-validity claim. - The PI, sponsor, institution, site, funder and authorized committees retain personnel, financial, contractual, activation, safety, amendment, report-submission, acceptance and termination authority.
