3 Key Differences Between PROPEL and CTMS

High staff turnover and burnout have been trending topics in the clinical trials industry over the last year. The goal of successful clinical trials is to get new treatments to market as quickly and safely as possible; however, the process from study startup to study completion is lengthy, and staff turnover causes disruption. With the right technology, standard pre-enrollment steps can be streamlined, automated, and accelerated across your site or site network—ensuring business intelligence is neither overlooked nor forgotten as staffing situations change. 

Furthermore, speeding up the pre-enrollment process can help increase diversity in clinical trials by onboarding sites faster, making your organization look more attractive to sponsors and CROs. 

PROPEL vs. CTMS 

A traditional clinical trial management system (CTMS) is designed to manage patient recruitment, scheduling, and study finances. But if you’re only using a CTMS, it can be hard to proficiently track enrollment and site activity, trial opportunities, timing, and performance across your entire clinical trial operations.   

Fig.1 Unique within the clinical trials industry, PROPEL is an all-inclusive pipeline, startup, trial intelligence, and automation system.

Built for clinical trials, the Devana Solutions tech suitewhich includes PROPEL for site networks and LYNK UP for single or emerging sitesis uniquely different from a CTMS. On average, site networks save almost 30 hours of time per week and increase revenue by 40% throughout the end-to-end clinical trial process with PROPEL’s improved workflows, study startup automation, and seamless integrations with popular CTMS and other mission-critical systems for end-to-end operational excellence. With PROPEL, information silos are replaced with organization-wide visibility into trial data and operations. While your CTMS is triggered at recruitment or post-enrollment, PROPEL is involved from initial pipeline management all the way through to study completion and analysis.  

1. Study Startup Automation  

PROPEL and LYNK UP are comprehensive solutions that optimize study startup and performance. Unlike a CTMS, Devana’s category-defining technology allows you to automate your pipeline of trials and your study startup. This allows users to seamlessly track and update milestones throughout the entire startup process. PROPEL transforms the pre-enrollment and study startup process in addition to providing wrap-around reporting every step of the way.   

2. Advanced Custom Analytics & Reporting (from initial pipeline management to study completion) 

Although CTMS includes metrics such as study enrollment, visit tracking, and protocol deviation logs, they do not include other essential insights that give you a comprehensive view of your organization. With PROPEL and LYNK UP, users can leverage additional key metrics such as turnaround timing, study opportunities, and overall study performance reports—enabling you to quickly identify and address bottlenecks to boost startup efficiency and trial performance. PROPEL includes custom dashboards and reports to easily see and share real-time performance metrics by sponsor, CRO, site, indication, and more.  

3. 360-degree View of Your Clinical Trial Operations 

As opposed to a stand-alone CTMS, PROPEL and LYNK UP enable sites to store everything related to ongoing and historical trials all in one place. Now, you can attach documents, emails, call logs, and more to individual study records—saving time and eliminating needless email chains, calls, and meetings. Custom tasks, alerts, and real-time threaded chat conversations facilitate cross-functional communication for both central and remote teams. With PROPEL and LYNK UP, teams can improve workflows, freeing staff from repetitive tasks and multiple clunky systems so they can focus on winning new opportunities. 

Click here to see a full breakdown of how PROPEL compares to a CTMS. 

Seamless Integrations with Industry-Leading CTMS 

PROPEL works in conjunction with your preferred CTMS to provide reporting and analytics across the entire clinical trial process. Data points entered into either system are automatically synchronized across both platforms—cutting out duplicate data entry, boosting efficiency, and decreasing clinical trial cycle times. And because your data is securely stored in one place, drilling down into study and site-specific data and performance insights is simple. 

But PROPEL’s integrations don’t stop at your CTMS. From contact management to email marketing, our open API gives you the power to integrate the tools your team is already using to be successful. Now you can truly have access to all the data and information you need—all in one place.  

From start to finish, PROPEL speeds up the entire clinical trial process, ultimately allowing your organization to respond to more trials and win more of the right awards.  

Already have a CTMS or looking to get one? PROPEL integrates with top CTMS solutions, including RealTime, CRIO, and Advarra’s Clinical Conductor.  

Devana Solutions 

Devana Solutions is an innovative cloud-based clinical trial software company that supports real-time collaboration between central research operations professionals and decentralized clinicians serving patients in diverse communities. Devana Solutions even bridges the technology access and data divide by seamlessly and securely connecting decentralized researchers to other mission-critical clinical trials systems. 

Let us show you in more detail what Better Data, Better Decisions, Better Outcomes could do for your clinical trial processes. Book a demo with Devana Solutions today to learn about our cloud-based data analytics clinical trial software for the clinical trials industry that integrates seamlessly with CTMS and other key systems to keep success in the crosshairs. 

Navigating the Great Resignation Within the Clinical Trial Industry

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a record 4.5 million workers quit their jobs in March 2022—a trend that has continued through the summer. Paired with rising inflation costs, this so-called “Great Resignation” is straining the clinical trial industry like never before. Turnover for both patient-facing and operations staff has been on the rise, causing some trials to come to a screeching halt.  

Clinical trial software such as Devana Solutions PROPEL can help central research operations save time and money by improving workflows and streamlining pipeline management.  

Streamline Processes with Clinical Trial Software 

With high turnover comes frequent regulatory and staff updates, including updating logs, gathering new signatures, and amending databases. Designed specifically for the clinical trial industry, PROPEL provides technological support for various backend workflows, including data entry, reporting, admin support, enrollment, query resolutions, and communications. Say goodbye to duplicate data entry! 

PROPEL enables users to automate tasks and reminders to expedite study start-up and ensure that nothing is overlooked or forgotten as staffing situations change. Teams can also link multiple contacts, documents, and communications across each clinical trial to save time and improve performance visibility. For end-to-end operational excellence, PROPEL integrates with other mission-critical systems, such as your CTMS and Microsoft Outlook. Instead of hunting for lost communications caused by staff turnover, PROPEL creates threaded conversations and allows users to attach documents, link related calls, and even send emails and messages directly from within the platform. 

Utilizing PROPEL, operations professionals can query site capabilities based on therapeutic expertise, investigator and staff certifications, physical site facilities, and more. This enables teams to efficiently share protocols digitally and distribute trial opportunities and documentation to study teams without the need for external communications or cumbersome old databases, saving both time and money. In addition, PROPEL is entirely cloud-based, which makes it simple for remote and decentralized users to log in and execute. 

Specifically designed for efficiency, PROPEL enables teams impacted by turnover and decreased budgets to accomplish more with less. 

Devana Solutions 

Devana Solutions is an innovative cloud-based clinical trial software company that supports real-time collaboration between central research operations professionals and decentralized clinicians serving patients in diverse communities. Devana Solutions even bridges the technology access and data divide by seamlessly and securely connecting decentralized researchers to other mission-critical clinical trial systems. 

Let us show you in more detail what Better Data, Better Decisions, and Better Outcomes could do for your clinical trial processes. Book a demo with Devana Solutions today to learn about our cloud-based data analytics clinical trial software for the clinical trials industry that integrates seamlessly with CTMS and other key systems to keep success in the crosshairs. 

Improve Study Outcomes with Clinical Trial Software for CROs

The relationship between sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs) is strengthening as outsourcing becomes a clinical trial norm. It is important for the CRO to have a good working relationship with sites in order to ensure that the trial is successful, particularly in the study startup phase, as clinical trials are increasingly expensive and time-consuming endeavors.

Key factors that influence a good relationship and where clinical trial software can help are:

  • Targeted Site Selection
  • Digitized Feasibility
  • Enhanced Site Collaboration and Communication
  • Process and Performance Transparency

Targeted Site Selection

More complex protocols require more precise site selection. Devana’s PROPEL technology allows for CROs to perform automated queries during site selection to determine the right sites or investigators based on the requirements of the protocol. PROPEL allows CROs to store the site and investigator performance and capabilities data that can be managed and updated by the sites, in real-time, allowing for more accurate site selection. Sponsors can be confident that the sites selected by the CRO will be capable of meeting performance expectations, resulting in better study outcomes.

Digitized Feasibility

While feasibility questionnaires are certainly a critical piece to selecting the right sites for a trial, the entire process, as it is today, is a bit archaic. Devana is revolutionizing the feasibility process by allowing CROs to submit a digitized feasibility to the sites selected for each trial. Say goodbye to outdated PDFs and third-party websites. This digital feasibility will pre-populate information that typically remains the same, trial to trial, such as the site’s location and contact information, but allows for the CROs to receive new, trial-specific data such as subject population criteria. The sites can review their previously submitted data for accuracy and respond to any new inquiries, resulting in a speedier feasibility process and a lower cost for the Sponsor.

Enhanced Site Collaboration and Communication

In addition to improving the feasibility process, Devana took it a step further by creating a threaded communication feed between the sites and CROs within the PROPEL platform. If a Sponsor reaches out to a CRO about a trial in bid-defense, needing to quickly know the potential subject pool for a particular indication, the CRO can instantly push out a mass communication to the sites and gather their responses within the platform. No more cumbersome calls or emails to track. Just the same, if a CRO submits a site for a trial, the site can review the details and provide feedback to the CRO or ask questions related to the protocol. It’s a win-win for all involved, the site, the CRO and the Sponsor, since this connectivity allows for more efficient communication throughout the entire clinical trial process.

Process and Performance Transparency

Another important aspect of a good working relationship between Sponsors and CROs is process and performance transparency. The entire clinical trial process, from study startup through close-out, produces a lot of key data. By using PROPEL, CROs have real-time views into the trial, by site, to know exactly where the trial is at any given time. The ability to quickly obtain this data and provide to Sponsors is critical to the swift and successful execution of a trial and the ability to mitigate risk.

Devana Solutions

Devana Solutions is an innovative cloud-based clinical trial software company that supports real-time collaboration between central research operations professionals and decentralized clinicians serving patients in diverse communities. Devana Solutions even bridges the technology access and data divide by seamlessly and securely connecting decentralized researchers to other mission-critical clinical trials systems.

Let us show you in more detail what Better Data, Better Decisions, Better Outcomes could do for your clinical trial processes. Book a demo with Devana Solutions today to learn about our cloud-based data analytics clinical trial software for the clinical trials industry that integrates seamlessly with CTMS and other key systems to keep success in the crosshairs.