How to Improve Site Workflow & Efficiency: Lessons from ALSA Research

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ALSA Research has two dedicated clinical research facilities situated in Bridgeport and Stamford Connecticut. Since 1994, the company has conducted phase II, III, and IV clinical trials for top pharmaceutical companies such as: Merck, Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, as well as many small to mid sized biotech firms. The company focuses its research across a range of medical specialties and diagnostic areas, and maintains a significant presence in research for the treatment of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.  

Streamlining Site Workflow with VersaTrial 

Like most sites, ALSA staff use upwards of 10 different sponsor-required technology solutions for every single trial. This creates access challenges and workflow interruptions as busy coordinators switch their focus between one of 10 active trials being simultaneously conducted at the site.

“We had to save bookmarks for each study to our own browser, so it was hard to tell which ones were for which study,” says study coordinator Hillary Acuna, who spends upwards of 15 minutes searching for a specific study bookmark. “You can’t really tell which is what: if one's for an eDiary, if one's the IRB website, if one's that EDC, it's hard to remember which ones are what.”

These challenges are exacerbated by trials with lengthy periods of inactivity.  “For one trial, we might not get a new patient months apart,” she adds. “So we forget which systems we're using”. 

With the entire team now leveraging the browser extension-based VersaTrial study assistant, finding and accessing the right technology tools is no longer a manual activity encroaching on the staff’s busy day. VersaTrial organizes all study-specific bookmarks and contacts in one convenient location; a shared online resource that is collaborative across the entire team so everyone sees all available tools needed for the study.  “Everything is right there at your fingertips,” comments regulatory specialist Cindy Schoeller.

“With VersaTrial we could just see which [link] matches up for what study and reach it faster. I don't have to remember anything, it's right there for me. And I think everything's just more organized,” says Acuna. “Before it would take you maybe 15 minutes to find the link. Now with VersaTrial you just click. It takes 30 seconds.”

“It's a definite time saver and definitely more organized. it just takes the confusion out of everything,” adds Schoeller. 

VersaTrial delivers speed and efficiency to the site’s most important activity —the patient visit—so they can conduct more of them. 

“When we're doing patient visits too, it's quicker to reach the registration and the randomization systems. So it makes visits quicker, it makes entering data quicker,” she says. 

Crucially for study Sponsors, the research team is reclaiming the extra time saved with VersaTrial to focus on quality. And that focus on quality can lead to cleaner data, higher accuracy, and less errors and deviations. 

“The time that we're saving, we invest in making sure we don't make mistakes,” says study coordinator Jovanessa Alcantara. “So we literally take the time that we would have taken before to be a little more meticulous, because it gives us that space, even an extra 2 to 3 minutes. We can look over documents a third or fourth time to make sure they're correct.”

To prevent miscommunication and dead ends, VersaTrial also gives the research team a clearer, up-to-date view of who to contact at the study Sponsor or CRO should the need arise. 

“Having the contacts area so that you can quickly have the phone number for your CRA or whichever company that you're dealing with helps a lot, " says Schoeller. “If we get a memo of a new CRA, we just immediately update it, get their phone number, get their email, and just keep everything up to date so that it's accessible for everybody.” 

“Having all the contacts for the study listed right there has been a huge plus,” adds site manager Mary Liscinsky. “Especially for myself last week when I needed to reach out to our Sponsors to request PI changes to our existing studies.”

Better yet, Sponsors and CROs are able to make staffing change edits directly within VersaTrial for instant, real-time communication to the site. 

Seamless Study Startup

As the research staff prepare for the crucial study launch, they need to carefully organize and confirm access to all required study technologies. This process is hindered by large volumes of software provisioning emails; some automated out of the platform being provisioned, and some coming directly from the CRA or other Sponsor contact. 

“They'll just be like ‘you have access to this website’, but they don't tell you really, if it's eDiary or EDC,” says Acuna. “It's a bunch of emails and it's hard to keep track of.” 

Since VersaTrial organizes each bookmark by type and recognizable platform logo, it makes it easy to identify what’s missing in a study’s tech stack sooner than later. And that means a more seamless, confident, and frustration-free first participant visit. 

“Since we see all the systems we need, if we don't have one, we can reach out to the sponsor and know that sooner than when it's time for the [first] visit and we realize we don't have it,” remarks Acuna. “Putting [the bookmarks] immediately into Versatrial just gets us all on the same page, and quicker,” adds Schoeller. 

Simplifying Employee Onboarding

The industry is broadly facing the highest turnover seen in decades, and when the inevitable happens at one of the ALSA sites, bringing new hires quickly up to speed becomes especially important for keeping studies on target. 

Schoeller says new employee onboarding is a definite challenge, but one she’s solving easily with VersaTrial. “Previous employees were having a lot of trouble keeping track of which platforms they needed to sign up for and to log into to do their training,” she says. “Now everything’s in one spot. It's much more organized and much easier to use.”

About VersaTrial

Through a lightweight web browser extension, VersaTrial lets site staff quickly organize, access and share technology bookmarks and key contact details for every study. For the site's business development team, VersaTrial auto-fills feasibility questionnaires from a shared answer library, seamlessly assigning unanswered questions to colleagues with automated tracking and reminder workflows. 

VersaTrial is FREE for sites. Get started today at versatrial.io