By Wilmer Barndt, Associate Director of Services Delivery
As clinical trial technology continues to evolve in an increasingly complex landscape, it’s important to understand best practices for integrating these vital resources. Successful technology integration can create a dependable ecosystem that supports every member of the team across the clinical trial workflow, ultimately getting vital treatments to patients faster.
The onset of the pandemic necessitated a sharp rise in decentralization. In this remote-enabled landscape, study teams came to rely on new technologies and the need for their integration to locate and support patients outside of the study area. These integrations ultimately worked towards a more streamlined workflow and the reduction of staff workloads.
So with these benefits, it seems as if integrating technologies would be a highly favorable choice. However, there remain barriers to adopting and integrating technologies for some trial professionals.
Barriers to Integration
In a 2021 poll by Verdict, a majority of respondents cited data authenticity, integrity, and confidentiality as a barrier to the adoption and integration of technologies. Hand in hand with this are team concerns about how they will manage data quality and ensure the system is reliable. Smaller teams may not have the expertise or staff needed to implement new technology or manage integrations.
There is also a perception that the process of adopting and integrating technologies impedes trial timelines. Therefore, study teams might believe that they don’t have time for an integrated system and, instead, elect to go the manual route, even if it requires extra work. In clinical work, data quality and integrity are critical. When manual data entry is introduced, the risk of human error goes up. Therefore, when considering the quality of the data, the benefit of integrating systems for data transfer vastly outweighs manual entry. Additionally, when data is flowing between systems, trial teams have real-time visibility of the trial data, positioning them to identify and address any issues quickly.
Large organizations may already have ecosystems made up of integrated technologies that have successfully served trial teams for years. They’re familiar with detailed aspects of how their system works. What can be a challenge for these organizations is standardizing an integrated system that serves all trials, leaving trial teams to build and rebuild individual systems for each trial.
While each of these barriers is significant, there are best practices that can streamline your clinical trial integrations. First, let’s review some of the standard systems that many trials rely on.
Clinical Trial Systems That Work Together
When organizations look at the scope and breadth of operations necessary to support a trial, it’s a good idea to consider the core clinical technologies that typically work well together. Trials typically rely on these core technologies and systems including:
Suvoda’s IRT often integrates with additional systems including supply forecasting, temperature excursion management systems used by depots, data warehouses, and central labs to transfer data and information.
Below is a diagram of a clinical technology data flow that shows what an ecosystem could look like with these individual systems working together.
Best Practices for Technology Optimization
How you approach an integrated ecosystem is critical to how it will operate. If you take a narrow view by focusing on data transfer specifications only, your system will do this. However, it misses the opportunity for the system to solve the operational challenges inherent in every trial. If you approach it by considering how the ecosystem will function to optimize workflow and operations, you build a lasting system tailored to the nuances of your trial team's needs. Let’s consider what good practice for ensuring your system works for you is.
Clinical trials and organizations ultimately benefit from taking a holistic approach to their technology, looking at it from all angles, and mapping a plan for today and the future. Choosing a partner with a team of integration specialists can accelerate your timeline and help eliminate risk.
Learn more about our approach to integrating technology.