Institute Verbeeten can start studies months faster

Everything was neatly arranged in folders on a hard drive. But sometimes the radiation oncologists at Institute Verbeeten had to search too long for the right documents. The Clinical Trial Management System(CTMS) from ResearchManager changed that.

The specialized hospital Institute Verbeeten irradiates patients who have cancer, provides nuclear medicine care and conducts clinical research. This includes studies on new therapies, technologies and treatment strategies. Annually, with about 250 employees, they treat 4,500 patients and examine 7,000 patients.

Lots of back-and-forth email with doctors

Before the arrival of ResearchManager, cumbersome document management caused delays in research processes. Jorine Vermaire, research coordinator at Institute Verbeeten: “Our folder structure couldn’t be much simpler, but radiotherapist-oncologists regularly asked us for help. Where can I find this? Will you send this to me? They preferred to spend their time on patient care. Adding documents was done through my colleague. That caused a lot of back-and-forth e-mail and took a lot of time.”

Studies startup also did not go smoothly. “We have to go through different statuses for that, so we often got questions about progress. At first, that was sometimes kept in Excel or even in a paper document. There was no system where physicians could see the status, and starting up studies took too long as a result.”

Include correct patient

Needless to say, access to accurate information is vital for the institute. “Especially with all the protocols in our work, it is important that everyone has the same up-to-date information. Otherwise you might include the wrong patient, for example, or miss important information that causes you to plan radiotherapy differently. And that in turn affects patient care,” Jorine says. It was time for a better solution.

Jorine Vermaire, Research coordinator

Easier data exchange

To optimize their research process and improve patient care, Institute Verbeeten now works with ResearchManager’s Clinical Trial Management System. Jorine: “Through cancer networks and our collaboration with, for example, the Elisabeth-TweeSteden Hospital, Jeroen Bosch Hospital and Amphia Hospital, we often heard the name ResearchManager mentioned. Because we exchange a lot of data, the choice for the same system was quickly made.”

There are now more than 35 of Jorine’s colleagues working with ResearchManager, doctors as well as the administrator and secretariat. “They had to get very used to it, but everyone is positive and happy with the overview. Logging in is also easy via a single sign-on on our intranet page.”

All documents and progress in one place

According to Jorine, the CTMS ensures fewer questions and more overview: “What I really like is that you have all the documents in one place. Everyone gets to see the same information. Colleagues have different access rights and some can also add documents themselves or start studies. They don’t have to email me anymore.”

She uses the status reviews the most. “What stage is the study at? How advanced is the other hospital and do they have the same documents? Thanks to ResearchManager, we are all on the same page. It’s also helpful to be able to keep track of all the costs, because when we work with a pharmaceutical, the budgets are complicated.”

Ongoing help from ResearchManager

ResearchManager’s team helped Jorine establish and implement the CTMS. “We first considered another vendor, but some of the support stopped there. I do consider such help a requirement. I now meet with someone from ResearchManager every other month to discuss questions and adjustments. For example, they recently added the digital signing module for us, for when we need to have documents approved by the science committee or director. They can log in themselves and give permission. There is then also a date attached, so you can always find back when someone approved something.”

Patients helped sooner

Jorine no longer wants to be without ResearchManager’s CTMS. And not just because of the additional insight, improved collaboration and regulatory compliance, “Because the entire research process is more streamlined, we can start studies sometimes months faster and help patients sooner.”

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