Columbia Technology Ventures

Scheduling, tracking, and database platform for clinical trial management

One of the most difficult aspects of running a successful clinical trial is managing the scheduling, appointments, and reminders that come with coordinating hundreds or thousands of different patients over a long period of time. This technology is a web application, called IMPACT, designed to facilitate clinical research trials by providing a central place for administrators, investigators, and coordinators to track all aspects of patient management and appointment scheduling that are important to all parties. Using this technology, clinical investigators will be able to manage trials more smoothly and more cost-effectively, while reducing attrition and improving study outcomes.

IMPACT reduces patient attrition and improves clinical study outcomes by improving scheduling administration

IMPACT facilitates clinical research trials by serving as a scheduling software system that tracks all aspects of appointments that are important to investigators, coordinators, and patients. The current features consist of a scheduling system with interfaces for schedulers and coordinators. IMPACT is also able to audit historical appointments, track patient attributes, and make notes of irregular events during visits. This technology will be further developed into a suite of applications that will facilitate other aspects of the research process for schedulers, coordinators, administrators, and investigators. Future functionality could include appointment reminders, adverse event reporting, external calendar synchronization, niche market customization, etc. IMPACT also interfaces directly with WebCAMP, a clinical research database, to easily acquire participant, study, and research staff information.

This technology is a working software that has been tested with 10 clinical research coordinators and has been published in the Journal of Biomedical Informatics.

Lead Inventor:

Chunhua Weng, PhD, FCMI

Applications:

  • Scheduling platform for creating and tracking appointments for clinical trials
  • Clinical trial participant database
  • Could be integrated with mobile to give notifications and reminders of important study behaviors (taking meds, recording results, etc.)
  • Specialized application for a niche area of medicine that has more complicated trial needs or more intensive patient management requirements

Advantages:

  • Tracks all aspects of patient appointments
  • Unique interfaces relevant for schedulers and coordinators
  • Audits historical appointments
  • Generates reports
  • Tracks attributes of irregular events
  • Synchronizes with WebCAMP to acquire participant, study, and research staff information

Patent Information:

Patent Pending

Tech Ventures Reference: IR CU16136

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