The CTMS Gap: Improving The CTMS Experience For Study Teams

By Michael Smyth, Division President and Hope Weisser, Senior Product Manager

Technology is intended to make our jobs and lives easier, however, complexity is inevitable. As clinical research and regulations evolve, the solutions we adopt to navigate this complexity are meant to bring order and efficiency. CTMS, perhaps above all other solutions, is specifically meant to deliver simplicity in oversight and process management. Yet, it can often involve a tangled web of configurations and reports that, technically, gets the job done, but not necessarily in a way that feels “right” for daily users like study managers and CRAs. Clinical research leadership (roles like CEO, VP of clinical operations, CTO, director of IT, etc.) look to these solutions to control costs, improve compliance, and minimize timelines, as well as improve the lives of their team members who are doing the day-to-day heavy lifting. If you’ve experienced these challenges first-hand, it’s not your imagination.

We refer to this miss in expectations as “The CTMS Gap.” Study managers and CRAs want to be able to see timelines, visualize critical data, and have confidence in their ability to stay compliant. They want the system to provide a guided, automated path for task completion. How do we close the gap?