Re-engineering the way technology supports clinical trials

Chaos? No thanks. Chaos is expensive, wasteful and extremely damaging to the bottom line as well as the psyche. When we began planning the eClinicalHealth platform, our aim was to avoid chaos. We wanted to achieve elegant simplicity. This required thinking differently.

Knowing another Electronic Data Capture (EDC) system wouldn’t do, we went back to the basics, creating a platform focused not on the harsh demands of technology but specifically on the needs of patients. Our theory was, that if we could devise a more intuitive solution and keep it simple for the most important people in the clinical trial process – the patients – everybody else would benefit, including sites and sponsors. Patients would be recruited more easily and drop out less. Information would flow faster and, ultimately studies would accelerate.

Clinpal

This is indeed what happened. Three years on, we offer a live product functioning as we had hoped. Fortunately, the market is responding as we hoped well: Clinpal now serves as the platform for multiple types of trials from 10,000 patient observational studies to proof of concept virtual trials.

Because we think simplicity should offer a certain elegance, Clinpal is beautiful. But when you look under the hood – or under the bonnet, as we say – that’s where the architecture takes center stage. It’s designed for 2015 and beyond.

clinpal_screenshot_mar2015

A sample study portal homepage – an entry point to Clinpal directly or via Social Media / Patient Advocacy groups

Clinpal performs so well because it was built differently, from the ground up. It’s not just an EDC system because an EDC system alone isn’t enough. It’s also not just an electronic Patient-Reported Outcome (ePRO) solution, or a recruitment solution, or electronic Informed Consent system. It’s all of that or only some of that, depending on the needs of users. It’s a cloud-based and modular .

So what is Clinpal being used for today?

  • Patient Recruitment
  • A portal for communication among all stakeholders
  • Electronic Data Capture
  • ePRO / WebPRO
  • electronic Informed Consent
  • Document Library
  • eLearning – vendor neutral, cross trial & sponsor

But that is not the end… if you can think of a need to exchange data in the way of forms or messaging between a patient, a site or a sponsor… then Clinpal can help.  The opportunities are endless.

Is Single-Sign-On from a large vendor not just as good?

I have been asked this question many times and every time, the answer is the same: sorry, no. SSO solutions typically run with different data and different definitions, so they need to be interfaced behind the scenes – which is complicated, time-consuming, expensive and difficult to maintain.

What about the cloud?

The term ‘cloud’ is often misused. To users it shouldn’t matter. What does matter is scalability, cost and ease of use. The giveaway typically is the system’s capacity to integrate. If you take, for example, systems that are deployed as a single install per study – integration and standardisation can become problematic. You can do it, but it is not “out of the box” and you’re adding cost and complexity.

With Clinpal, patients, sites and sponsors all log in to the same system. Keeping budgets in mind, we knew it wasn’t enough to make sure our components integrate well – so we ensured that you don’t need to integrate to use individual features. All forms, workflow and messaging are common across the product whether it’s an eCRF page, a WebPRO page, a site question or even an eICF electronic Informed Consent Form. The methods are the same. This means we’re able to provide a single common user experience from an initial recruitment experience all the way through eLearning, data capture and trial completion.

Now compare this with the mess that we have in worlds where there are four or more logins for a single study. We’re talking data duplication (site lists x 4), multiple user accounts, extra costs, unhappy users.. and, well, yes – chaos.

 

To hear more about how you can reduce, or even avoid the chaos, contact a Clinpal expert at info@clinpal.com, or Contact Us

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