Insights Blog

In summer months you can look down from one of the bridges spanning the Cuyahoga River here in Cleveland, Ohio to see rowing teams seated in slender rowing shells, slicing through the murky water. In each shell team members pull on their oars, propelling the sleek craft with remarkable speed and efficiency. Of course, that speed is possible only when everyone rows in cadence, and in the same direction.

That same level of coordination and integration is absolutely essential for the technologies on which clinical research organizations rely to manage regulatory and other essential trial information. Without that integration organizations can’t move forward, facing unnecessary duplication of effort, interrupted communication flow, and other costly, time-consuming obstacles.

November 11, 2017 – ROCHESTER, NY – Bio-Optronics, the makers of the market leader Clinical Conductor Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS), and Complion, the powerful eRegulatory and document management platform for sites, have partnered to integrate their best-in-class solutions to deliver an industry-leading solution for research organizations.

The companies are building upon their long-standing commitment to meet customer needs and develop innovative solutions to empower investigative sites to run the world’s best research. This integration introduces a highly robust application suite, enabling research organizations to operate efficiently and profitably, while maintaining compliance with 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA, and Good Clinical Practice (GCP).

Flooding in Houston. Wildfires in Sonoma. Utter devastation in San Juan. Natural disaster has dominated recent headlines, providing a sobering reminder of just how susceptible we are to the power of nature. Watching the news coverage of people struggling to rebuild lives, homes, and businesses, I find myself wondering if it is even possible to be prepared for such incredible destruction. There are limitations to how much you can protect yourself and your property, and given the level of destructive force on display in recent disasters, it seems the only truly viable precaution is to be somewhere else.

In life and in business, so many tough decisions would be so much easier to make if you only had the ability to see into the future. But in the real world, the best you can do is to draw on the experience of others who have faced similar critical decisions, learned what works and what doesn’t, and applied those lessons to shape your decision.

For most sites the transition to an eRegulatory system is not a matter of if, but when. Fortunately, you have a unique opportunity to draw on the experience of panel of professionals who have completed that transformation at the 2017 Global Site Solutions Summit, taking place October 6-8, 2017 in Boca Raton, FL.

The following is based on the Question and Answer portion of “Document Management Success: A Guide to Part 11 System Validation,” a Complion webcast featuring Michelle Grienauer, JD, MPH, Senior Regulatory Attorney at Kinetiq, and Cristina Ferrazzano Yaussy, MPH, CCRP, VP of Professional Services, Complion, Inc. The webinar explored what clinical research sites should know about validating eRegulatory and document management systems. 

366 individuals from the clinical research industry attended: 31% from an Academic Medical Center, 23% from a Hospital or Health System, 12% from a Dedicated Research Site, 11% from a Cancer Center, 7% from a Physician Practice, and 5% from a Sponsor or CRO. Prior to the webinar, the audience was polled to collect feedback about the current state of document management and validation.

Real-world examples of how a clinical research sites are turning to eRegulatory  to manage email correspondenc and run more efficiently.

Despite your best efforts to keep your email inbox clear, it can easily become overstuffed as your day to day correspondence pours in. That’s a problem. But that problem takes on massive significance when that email correspondence is part of the documentation in a clinical trial and subject to FDA regulations with specific requirements for how that correspondence is organized and managed. Printing and filing hard copies of email correspondence only exacerbates the problem.

Growth is good. Growth is healthy. But clinical research sites that rely on paper-based systems or even shared drives will quickly find that growth, particularly as it relates to managing multiple locations, can dramatically increase aspirin consumption in order to counteract headaches of truly historic proportions.

Sites that still rely on paper must manually route documents, either physically or by email, across a spiderweb of locations in an effort to collect physician signatures or to get people to sign off on reviews. That process can leave a cluttered trail of redundant documents and duplicate files, which only increases the possibility that something will go wrong, and turns that dream of increased visibility into document tracking and task assignment into a nightmare of wasted time and money.

Complion Founder and CEO, Rick Arlow, along with Advanced Clinical Trials President, Jeremy Rigby, will host an educational webinar for the Society of Clinical Research Sites (SCRS) on April 25, 2017.

Earn credit for one Contact Hour by attending Embracing a Paperless Process: Best Practices for Regulatory and Document Management. This one-hour webinar will focus on best practices for electronic document management and explore strategies for saving time and money and improving compliance by connecting new eRegulatory and document systems to existing systems.