Southampton team win award for excellence in data management
The Research and Development (R&D) team at University Hospital Southampton (UHS), together with the EDGE team from the Clinical Informatics Research Unit (CIRU) at the University of Southampton, have taken home an award for developing an innovative approach to support remote monitoring during the coronavirus pandemic.
They were presented the award at a special ceremony hosted by the Association for Clinical Data Management (ACDM) on Monday 6 September. Over 100 attendees joined the event, some in person at the venue in Manchester, and some virtually, to celebrate the achievement of their colleagues.
The team used EDGE, the cloud-based clinical trials management system developed by the Clinical Informatics Research Unit (CIRU) at the University of Southampton, and seen in over a third of all NHS organisations, to develop the new function that they have been recognised for.
The tool allows sponsors to access trial information remotely and has limited the need for them to visit the site in person, an issue which was proving to be a challenge at the start of the pandemic.
Dr Mikayala King, R&D Quality Assurance Manager at UHS and part of the team behind the innovation, said: “Myself and the R&D team at UHS are honoured to receive this award. This new approach has made a significant difference to the research team over recent months and it is fantastic to see it celebrated by the ACDM and NIHR.
Mikayala continues: “We first discovered the need for remote monitoring at the beginning of the first lockdown. At that time, no visitors were allowed on site, not even those visiting patients, but we still had studies where participants were receiving treatment that needed to be monitored. We needed to come up with a way of doing that remotely.
“Once we started the conversation about EDGE, we knew we would need to validate that process which is a huge job to take on. We would also need to check in with our Information Governance and Information Security teams to ensure that they were happy.”
Kim Lee from the Quality Assurance team at the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility (CRF) led the important work of delivering effective governance and information security for the project.
Kim explained: “There were many factors to consider in order to ensure that the process was suitable for studies and effective communications between all parties involved were crucial. The study team has been very receptive to this process which helped the success of the project in partnership with the EDGE team.”
“We are thrilled to have won this award, it is testament to the determination and hard work of the team over the pandemic.”
Beth Caruana, CIRU Marketing & Communications Specialist, said: “I know I can speak on behalf of the EDGE team that we are thrilled to win this award. It is always a pleasure working with our users from UHS and I am glad they have had this recognition for their hard work on this project, especially through devoting extra time and effort through such challenging times”.
In September 2020 CRN Wessex shared an article looking at the process that the R&D team went through to create the tool.
