Standardized Collaborative Training a Benefit to CTMS

There continues to be so much talk about the spiraling cost of clinical trial management. Because certain costs are fixed, there exists an ever increasing need to efficiently manage as many variable costs as possible. It seems obvious to us that a well-managed and well-documented training program would be well served in creating process efficiencies.

A partner at PriceWaterhouse Coopers recently stated:

"Working with others accelerates and facilitates innovation, discovery and development, which in turn can reduce costs and benefit both large and smaller companies. Even small changes could yield significant savings."

We all know that time is money and during study start-up we often aim for the “sweet spot”, rapid implementation without compromising data quality. This often means quickly hiring and training new team members, vendors and site personnel. To ensure consistency and quality across the globe, training plans, process documents, and study specific requirements are created. Why not use a web-based Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) to effectively manage your training needs?

Consistency in Content

We’ve all had it happen to us. A document is circulated by email for review and implementation. In the meantime, a significant update occurs yet one critical reviewer is unaware and reviews an old version. This type of inefficiency during study start-up is a frustrating, expensive inefficiency that can be easily mitigated. Using a web-based CTMS document repository, authors and reviewers are identified, current versions available, and estimated document finalization ensures your team members and reviewers are always up to date.

Universal Access from Any Location

With a web-based CTMS, Sponsors and CROs can maintain a central repository for training documentation, SOPs, and guidelines to ensure GCP compliance. Furthermore, this documentation can be created in any number of languages, all of which can be hosted within the web-based repository, and all of which can be modified anytime in real time, with updates available in minutes. Global team members have the ability to securely access the documentation from any web-enabled computer.

Investing in a Better Quality Program

While budgeting for training programs may not get the same priority as supply chain management, the need to invest in improving quality through better training programs cannot be overstated. With a web-based CTMS, not only can you make the documents and processes available for training, you can also track the progress of team member training and maintain training records. Why wait until close to study closure to find certain individuals do not have documentation of complete training records? We think that proactive planning and maintenance of team member training and training records goes a long way to ensuring consistency in study oversight and efficiency in process. What is the downside you ask? A breakdown in GCP can impact the overall success or failure of a study, and impact the Sponsor should a Regulatory Agency have questions concerning processes or change management issues or data integrity. We agree, small changes do yield significant savings!

Web-based CTMS Offers Real Time Solutions

Investing in a web-based CTMS offers many other benefits to optimizing clinical trial management, but improving the team member adherence to necessary SOPs and training documents through well-organized repositories and built-in training records will reap real time benefits to both sponsors and CROs.