Key Efficiencies Driven by a Clinical Trial Management System

In today’s world of research, using a clinical trial management system (CTMS) can significantly streamline operations, and make for a more efficient research study. Do you know if you’re using your CTMS to its fullest capabilities? Below are some of the ways sites can get the most value from their CTMS platform.

Facilitating Cross Team Communications

Oftentimes, research teams at large institutions such as academic medical centers, cancer centers, and large health systems are very siloed. To keep a study moving, it’s important to remove communication barriers to ensure smooth processes, workflows, and accelerated timelines.

A comprehensive system like Advarra’s OnCore CTMS centralizes communication, proactively facilitating collaboration among internal teams to break down silos. One example of this is cross-team task lists – staff are immediately notified which tasks they need to complete, when they can begin them, and when they are due. In many cases, these tasks are repeatable across studies, further standardizing cross-team collaboration and communication, and making life much easier for site staff. Configuring protocol milestones also triggers notifications for coordinators overseeing many parallel trials.

Single, Centralized Calendar

Research is becoming increasingly complex, and this is often reflected in the study calendar itself. The calendar includes information such as when subjects will be seen, what occurs during each visit, and what data will be recorded during each visit. As a result, centralizing the calendar in OnCore—and leveraging that calendar to drive study-related tasks and downstream workflows—can further streamline communication across teams and keep complex studies on track. A centralized calendar can also provide historical documentation following amendments and changes to the protocol to make sure all participants are receiving the correct level of care.

Financials and Reconciliation

In addition to the benefits noted above, centralized study calendars also help drive downstream financial and billing workflows. As participants move through a study, staff can generate financial items based off of the financial calendar. This leads to having both a budget calendar on top of an existing financial calendar, with room for error.

With protocols in the stage where they are generating financials, it’s important to have a CTMS to keep track of each occurred visits, individual procedures, visit variations, and invoiceable items, all centralized under an individual sponsor for your protocol. Using both a receivable and payable component in a CTMS, allows you to both invoice and receive payments related to the protocol and utilizing vendor payables allows for tracking payments out to other departments through your system.

Study Staff Visibility

Having visibility into a protocol allows staff to track its status and overall health in real-time. This is beneficial at any point in the study – from the time you enter the protocol into the system, you can see where you’re at with the institutional review board (IRB) review process, how accruals are progressing, whether timelines are being met, and more.

Another benefit of this increased visibility is the ability to quickly and easily identify areas of the study where your site isn’t being adequately compensated. Perhaps your site is having to do more standalone procedures for individual visits as the trial has evolved, and there’s a need to get an amendment. The ability to track all aspects of the study, and leverage that visibility in real time, is invaluable to ensure operational success.

Strong User Adoption

Even the best CTMS won’t be valuable to your site unless you have the resources to get the most from the platform. A strong, collaborative user community is key to learning tips and best practices from those who already use the system day in and day out. And comprehensive training and documentation are vital to ensure both a successful adoption of the platform, but also ongoing success as your organization scales the use of the CTMS and onboards new staff. Advarra provides a wealth of documentation and facilitates the Onsemble community for organizations to share best practices.

How Advarra Can Help

For academic medical centers, cancer centers, or large institutions handling large volumes of research each year, OnCore enables you to gain visibility into all aspects of your research operations. OnCore enables staff to automate the flow of information between systems, gain insight with comprehensive reporting and analytics, and effectively manage the entire protocol timeline.

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