Kyle Ricketts

Patient consent is important to stay on top of for many reasons. If patients have not agreed to the latest consent form, the validity of your trial data could be at stake. A CTMS makes it easier to track the latest consent forms and which patients have or have not signed the form. CTMS technology takes away the risk that new and signed consent forms could be overlooked, saving time and money while also increasing the quality of your trial data. Here are just some ways an effective CTMS can make consent form tracking easier at your organization:

With an effective CTMS, you can quickly and easily upload the latest consent form and attach it to a particular study. This makes it easy to pull up and print for when patients need to sign the form. What’s more, all previous versions of a study’s consent form are also available for granular tracking purposes. Uploading your consent forms onto the CTMS prevents errors and lost documents while also making it simple for your coordinators to access up-to-date forms in real time.

Track Which Consent Form Patients Have Signed

Trying to stay on top of which patients have signed the most updated consent form is a difficult task. What’s more, coordinators need to analyze which patients are even required to sign the latest consent form. These complexities leave lots of room for errors that can cost your organization time and money, and even potentially hurt the quality of your trial data. A CTMS can make this process even easier by generating a report that lists each study patient and the consent form they have signed. This gives your coordinators a clear list of patients they can then analyze to determine who needs to sign updated consent forms.

Your organization also needs to track when patients withdraw consent. If withdrawn consent is overlooked or poorly tracked, your data has more potential to be compromised, you may be putting the patient in danger and you are at risk to lose money conducting unnecessary procedures. An effective CTMS can also track when patients have withdrawn consent throughout a study. What’s more, a CTMS can track how many times a patient has withdrawn consent. By being able to track everything related to withdrawn consent, your organization now has a clearer, more accurate picture of your trial data.

This post first appeared on the Bio-Optronics Blog 

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Patient consent is important to stay on top of for many reasons.

The Importance of Detailed Patient Consent Tracking

Finding the right CTMS is a long, difficult process. This process can be more difficult if you go into it without knowing some major decisions you will have to make. Below are 6 questions you should have answered before you dive deep into your CTMS search:

Are you committed to finding the right CTMS?

If you say yes, congratulations and move to question two.

Who or what department will have the final say?

Know who needs to be convinced before you start your CTMS search; this way, the right people are included on all important meetings. This will eliminate confusion and frustration while also streamlining your decision making process.

What level of customization do you think you need?

Are you looking for a system that is 100% custom to your organization type or 100% out of the box? Likely the answer is somewhere in between. Finding out where your organization falls on this spectrum will help you find the right CTMS provider much more quickly.

Do you feel you need a consultant to help you find the right system? If not, are your internal IT and research resources enough to get you what you want? Knowing who will help you make your decisions early on will save a lot of headaches later on.

What functions do you want your CTMS to serve?

Are you looking for a system that only does certain things? You may also want to consider a system that contains an array of features you can utilize as your organization continues to grow and evolve over time. This way, you are already prepared with the necessary functionality to handle any challenge that comes your way.

The key word in this question is "desired". So many factors contribute to your timeline, but knowing where you would ideally like to be will allow you to set milestones for your CTMS project to ensure everything is more likely to stay on track.

There are many questions that will need answering when you are looking for your ideal CTMS, but by answering these six, you will be able to start off on the right foot and you will be more likely to find what exactly works for you!

Finding the right CTMS is a long, difficult process.

Start Your Search Right: Know the Decisions You'll Need to Make When You Search for a CTMS

CTMS applications have many features, but for your organization, different features will hold different levels importance. When looking at CTMS applications, you should know what to look for and ask to see. Utilize these tactics to better understand how each CTMS will benefit your specific organization:

This is a simple, but often overlooked, tactic. Work with your organization to determine specific features and processes you would want in your ideal CTMS. Share these items with every vendor you meet with and ask to see how each system addresses each item.

Make another list of items you dislike related to your current process and also ask to see how each CTMS completes these processes. This will allow you to determine which applications most align with the ideal way you want to complete your research.

You are just one person working in one role at your research organization. Involve other parties in your CTMS search. This way, their needs are addressed early on, which will facilitate adoption once you select a CTMS and begin to roll it out at your organization.

A CTMS is only one system you will use to complete your research. Ask every vendor if and how their CTMS can integrate or interface with your other technologies. Also, don't forget to inquire about the time and cost associated with these integrations. 

This is a helpful tactic that will help you remember WHY you are looking for specific features or why you ruled out a specific CTMS vendor. This way, you don't waste time second guessing your decisions and avoid wasting time and money.

CTMS applications have many features, but for your organization, different features will hold different levels importance.

Control the Conversation with CTMS Vendors

In clinical research, it’s essential to know where you’re going. It’s equally as important to know where you are, as well as where you’ve been. Knowing all of these factors gives research organizations the necessary insights they need to evolve into an even more successful business. The problem is, knowing all of this information is hard. There aren’t any all-knowing programs to provide this information, but you can come close when you use a CTMS.

Selecting the right trials for your organization is critical to its ongoing success; however, sometimes selecting the right studies can be more difficult than expected. To truly know you are making the right decisions, it is important to have data at your fingertips to help make decisions easier.

A great CTMS will help research organizations do just that, with the analytics that it stores, essentially telling you whether or not you can expect success when conducting a particular study before you take it on.

During the feasibility process, a CTMS can tell you if you have a sufficient number of qualified candidates in your patient database, how you have performed financially on previous studies, if you have the right equipment and much more. These helpful analytics allow your organization to know if you’ll be successful with a study before you start, saving your organization both time and money.

Once you’ve selected to become part of a study, there are a lot of things you need to track to keep the study running smoothly. A CTMS can provide your organization real-time reports regarding the progress of your recruitment goals, completed visits, budgetary performance and much more. A CTMS can also alert you if things start to fall behind, allowing you to quickly start on any corrective actions. These tools allow you the ability to keep your trials moving in a timely manner without any unnecessary costs.

It’s important to see how your organization benefited from your trials. CTMS reports can track overall trial success related to time and money, in addition to identifying any weaknesses related to study stages, locations, or personnel. From there, you are presented with actionable information you can use to improve your research processes. In addition, the analytics in a CTMS continue are typically stored forever, making post-trial metrics the pre-trial metrics for future trials and giving you a more complete look into your organization’s performance as you continue to conduct trials and search for the right ones to conduct in the future. 

This was previously posted on the Bio-Optronics Blog 

In clinical research, it?s essential to know where you're going.

Predictive Analytics: Helping You Reach True Clinical & Business Success

There are a variety of CTMS applications on the marketplace today, and organizations sometimes have a hard time selecting the system that will work the best for them. If you are having a hard time differentiating based upon features alone, one key item to consider is customer support. Understanding the level of support your CTMS offers is vital. If the support is lacking, you could be missing out on essential aspects of your CTMS, costing you valuable time and money. 

After you purchase a CTMS, the support team should be timely in working with you to establish a deployment timeline. With this, your organization should have an established point of contact who will be your guide to getting acclimated to your new CTMS. Your point of contact should help you configure the CTMS to your organization’s unique needs. In addition to this, they should work with you to train both you and your staff on how to effectively use every facet of the CTMS. This training should also be customized based on the size and needs of your organization. In addition, the training should be customized for each person’s role within your organization (i.e. coordinator, recruiter or administrator). This level of granularity allows your organization to hit the ground running when the time comes to begin using your CTMS and maximizes the return you can derive from using the application.

After deployment, you may have questions that arise with your CTMS. It is important to have a support system you can reach out to during these instances. Proper CTMS providers will have full-service support included with your CTMS at no additional cost, rather than a separate contract that takes up more of your budget. This support should also be available when you need it, so your trials aren’t inhibited by unanswered support questions. What’s more, as your organization grows, this support should be available to train new employees on how to use the CTMS. Another essential aspect to top-notch support is training for product updates. As the CTMS provider adds features and functionality, your organization should be invited to training sessions where you and your staff receive training on how to use these additional features. Without this training, new updates have far less value to you or your organization.

If you have a CTMS, or if you’re starting to look for one, make sure you ask detailed questions about the support that is available. If support falls short, your organization will not attain maximum value from the application, and you can quickly become dissatisfied with your CTMS. With so many applications available, the support is oftentimes a clear differentiator when finding the right CTMS for your organization.

There are a variety of CTMS applications on the marketplace today, and organizations sometimes have a hard time selecting the system that will work the best for them.

Does Your CTMS Provide Effective Support? It Should.

Editor's Note: This post first appeared on the 

Generating a complete schedule for a hospital department or specialty practice can be a highly complex process that can take weeks to complete successfully. Unfortunately, many organizations face this problem on a daily basis, with no relief in sight. However, there are finally solutions that give scheduling administrators all of the tools needed to build schedules in minutes, not hours.

Converting from a manual to an automated scheduling process provides healthcare organizations of all sizes a tremendous sense of relief when it comes to schedule generation. Improve schedule accuracy, eliminate scheduling errors, reduce generation time and improve staff satisfaction, all with the click of a button. Additionally, automated scheduling tools provide the benefit of preserving an organization’s scheduling memory. No longer does an organization need to rely on one person or a group of people to know the intricacies of the scheduling process. The official rules and policies of the organization will be recorded for all future scheduling administrators.

When the time comes to select a scheduling application, it is critical to consider several very important factors that can greatly impact the final outcome. Below is a list of nine key factors to keep in mind while researching and selecting physician and staff scheduling applications.

Most healthcare organizations have equity goals or requirements for physicians and staff. Fairly and evenly distributing physicians and staff across the different roles within an organization can be one of the most difficult tasks a scheduler will need to perform. Automated scheduling applications can make managing role equity extremely easy. Top-notch scheduling applications will allow for custom equity goals to be coded into the system so that all staff hours requirements are met. A critical factor to consider is if the scheduling application is designed to automatically take equity into account with each schedule it builds.

Physicians and support staff are always on the move, and might not have time to sit down at a computer to check the schedule. It is critical for staff to have access to schedules via mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets. Additionally, users should be able to integrate schedules with existing Outlook, iCal and Google Calendars to eliminate the need to maintain multiple schedules.

All healthcare organizations have rules and policies that dictate how physician and staff schedules should, and need to, be created. Each organization is different, and operates under a different set of rules, policies, constraints and other variables. Some organizations have very simple schedules, while others operate under complex constraints that can make scheduling a nightmare. In order for a scheduling application to be successful, it needs to conform to the specific needs of each organization. Furthermore, a premier scheduling application will have support staff on-hand who will completely configure the system to your needs and will ensure the schedules are being created exactly as needed.

Creating physician and staff schedules by hand is a time consuming process, which can often lead to mistakes and an uneven distribution of shifts. Additionally, managing the dozens of factors that can impact a schedule is a tedious and sometimes downright frustrating process. Scheduling administrators can eliminate this stress by using a physician scheduling application that automates the process of building schedules, the application takes into account any and all variables when building a schedule. Hours of manual work can be reduced to the simple click of a button.

Scheduling administrators need to be able to keep track of each physician or staff member’s time off. Be it for a conference or just regular vacation, tracking time off is essential for ensuring proper coverage for each specialty and role. Scheduling applications should be able to automatically take into account staff requests and ensure that staff with approved requests are not scheduled when they are not available. Additionally, scheduling applications should give users the ability to see how approving time off requests will impact the schedule in the future, preventing short-staffing situations.

No matter how automated a schedule is, there will always be a need to make manual changes to a schedule. No matter the reason, a top-notch scheduling application will give users the ability to make manual changes to a schedule. Furthermore, a leading scheduling application will provide tools that provide transparency into how manual changes will effect the overall schedule; this way, users are not making changes in a vacuum. Are any rules being broken with a particular change? Will there be a short-staffing situation in another area should a switch be made?

While the functionality of a scheduling application is critical, support and service should be another key factor lurking in the back of people’s minds. The quality of support can make or break the successful use of a scheduling application. Top-notch scheduling providers will provide dedicated account representatives who will learn every facet of an organization’s schedule and ensure perfect schedules are built every time. General support should also be available daily to answer questions, provide additional training or make changes as necessary.

Organizational needs change frequently. It is important that scheduling application developers continue to release updates that make the software run more efficiently and create new features that allow for optimized schedule and workforce management. A scheduling company that understands users are always evolving will consistently have software updates.

As a healthcare organization, expansion is always a possibility. This expansion may be through the addition of more staff at existing locations or through the addition of multiple locations. Taking into account potential expansion in the future is a necessary step organizations need to consider before selecting a scheduling application today. While there are many scheduling companies that have software that is capable of scaling along with organizational growth, it is important to note that scalability is just one of the factors used in determining which product is best for your organization.

Generating a complete schedule for a hospital department or specialty practice can be a highly complex process.