UHS

EDGE & UHS

EDGE & UHS collaborate

and win Team Excellence Award

We are delighted to share that we recently won a joint award along with The Research and Development (R&D) team at University Hospital Southampton (UHS), for Team Excellence in the Management of Clinical Data. This award follows our collaborative work with the team at UHS on developing an innovative approach to support remote monitoring during the coronavirus pandemic using our EDGE Programme.

We picked up the award at the ceremony hosted by the Association for Clinical Data Management (ACDM) on Monday 6 September 21, which was held in Manchester at the Innside hotel. The event was sponsored by another CIRU service, CORE, and showcased achievements in the management of clinical data and had over 100 delegates attend from across the country.

After a lot of time and dedication into this project, EDGE is now being successfully used at UHS for remote monitoring, allowing sponsors to access trial information remotely, limiting the need for them to visit the site in person. This was something that was proving a real issue at the start of the pandemic.

The team from UHS have led this innovation whilst working closely with some of our EDGE team members, and we are thrilled that they have had recognition of their hard work as well as recognition for what has been a successful collaboration between both teams.

Kim Lee, Senior Q&A Lead at the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility (CRF), UHS, led on ensuring effective governance and information security for the project. Herself and colleagues overcome many hurdles and challenges through a very long process.

Following the outcome of the award Kim has shared this comment:

“We are thrilled to have won this award, it is testament to the determination and hard work of the team over the pandemic.”

For more information check out the September 2020 CRN Wessex article looking at the process that the R&D team went through to create the tool.

Life as an EDGE admin by Thomas Bower

Tom Bowers using EDGE

Similar to the universe clinical research at University Hospital Southampton (UHS) is continuously expanding, which has ultimately enabled more studies to be conducted here.  To ensure studies are efficient and hit recruitment targets an increase in staff numbers and departments has occurred to meet this demand.

Like clinical research at UHS, EDGE has constantly evolved since being developed by the Clinical Informatics Research Unit within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton. With such a great number of individuals and departments within UHS utilising such an intelligent research management system, the role of an EDGE champion was created to overcome any issues that may arise because of this. Alongside my job as a Clinical Research Coordinator, I am also an EDGE champion, who are the human and digital assistants of EDGE and direct users to their solution. We achieve this by providing the central support for individuals and enable efficient communication between clinical teams, management, R&D, finance teams, and support departments.

As a local admin we utilise EDGE in numerous ways from monitoring and providing access to individuals for specific studies, to capturing the current status of studies. In addition to this we are required to have knowledge in all areas of EDGE, which enables us to answer all queries that may be asked from a member of staff. This knowledge would cover aspects including, study statistics, requesting involvement to a study, transfer of ownership, document upload, reporting finances, recruitment activity and reports, study timelines, and so on.

The framework and support that has been created by using EDGE has brought people together and has allowed me as a local admin to create relationships across the trust, that enable me to be more efficient not just in using EDGE but in my role as a Clinical Research Coordinator.

Blog post written by Thomas Bower,
Clinical Research Coordinator, 
University Hospital Southampton