Together 25: The EDGE Conference 2025

Together 25

The EDGE Conference 2025

Following on from another successful EDGE Conference which was held back in April of this year, we are thrilled to share with you details of our next EDGE Conference!

‘TOGETHER 25’ marks 25 years of EDGE at the Clinical Informatics Research Unit and will celebrate 25 years of sharing, learning, and innovating with you, the EDGE Community. TOGETHER 25 also aims to kickstart shaping the next 25 years of research excellence with the help of our global userbase. The event will showcase EDGE expert users working within the field of research, who will share their best practice, knowledge, and practical ways in utilising EDGE to ultimately shape research excellence and efficiency.

Our Silver Jubilee will be taking place at a brand-new venue of the EDGE Conference, the Hilton London Heathrow T5 on the 4th and 5th June 2025. We are excited to be using a new venue for this special event and feel that the Hilton London T5 is the perfect fit to mark the 25-year occasion, with its flexible and purpose-build event space.

TOGETHER 25 is the opportunity to unite with fellow members of the EDGE community and will showcase the strength of working together.  

We have now opened bookings and our currently taking speaker submission where users from across the UK and at our overseas organisations will be taking the stage to share their best practice to the community.

For more information on the EDGE Conference 2025, see our dedicated webpage here.

A visit to our Canadian Users

A visit to

our Canadian Users

Last month Jen Peach, Knowledge Team Manager, Ben Grace, Client Manager, and our Head of Operations and Delivery, Baljinder Gill took a trip over to Canada to visit some of our Canadian users. They visited EDGE Lead Admins from The 3CTN Coordinating Centre in Toronto and the Juravinski Cancer Centre in Hamilton. Ben and Bal also visited the Lead Admins from Alberta Innovates in Calgary.

Jen and Ben provided two full days of joint training sessions for the new Lead Admins and finance teams for University Health Network (UHN) and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. Jen, Ben, and Bal also visited both UHN and Sunnybrook locations in Toronto to discuss the use of EDGE within the organisations.

Ben and Bal visited the Tom Baker Cancer Centre in Calgary where they completed further training for end-users, Lead Admins, and the finance team.

Pictured: James Schoales, Portfolio Data Analyst - 3CTN, Baljinder Gill, Head of Operations and Delivery - CIRU, UoS, Stephen Sundquist, Executive Director - 3CTN, Rebecca Xu, Portfolio and Informatics Manager - 3CTN, Jen Peach, Knowledge Team Manager, and Ben Grace, Client Manager - CIRU, UoS 

An EDGE International visit

An EDGE

International visit

Last month, our Director, Professor James Batchelor and Head of Trading Services, Tim Gibbons, were invited by the Rosemary Bryant Institute at the University of South Australia to speak to the University and representatives from the States Health Groups about their experiences of working across health research in the UK and some of the international successful research programmes they have worked on. Tim and James covered many topics including Health Data Platforms, Secure Data Environments (SDE), Open Plan Care, Hospital Eco-Systems, Accelerating Cancer Clinical Trial Activity and Data Squishing for Fun (a personal passion of James!) The Rosemary Bryant Institute are a close partner of CIRU as both are centres that host Sri Lankan Research Fellows from the Commonwealth Centre for Digital Health, a collaboration which spans over 10,000 miles.

From Adelaide, James and Tim travelled to Auckland, New Zealand, to meet with our long-standing EDGE users and lead champions at the University of Auckland (Waipapa Taumata Rau) and Te Whatu Ora Te Toka Tumai Auckland. On a round-robin tour, they met with groups from the top to bottom of the country including Waikato, Otago, Wellington, Christchurch, and Dunedin. They discussed the benefits and pitfalls of digital transformation in the health service and the advantages leveraged across the UK from close collaboration, as well as the advancements that have been achieved in using single platforms within a research office geography and a shared approach to research.

James and Tim were of course accompanied by EDGEY, who very much enjoyed himself on his South Australia and New Zealand tour!

MFA is coming soon to EDGE

MFA is

coming soon to EDGE!

We have recently been sharing announcements regarding a new security feature coming soon to EDGE, known as MFA (Multi-factor Authentication).

For many organisations, MFA has been a requirement as part of the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT). NHS England has now requested that all organisations are compliant, more information on this can be found here.  

We are introducing MFA as an optional new feature that users can turn on themselves. EDGE has two methods for MFA, Email or One-time code. To help explain the new functionality, including how to set up MFA, we have put together some new articles within the KnowledgeBase, which can be found under the ‘Support’ tab when logged into EDGE.  

MFA is one of the most effective ways to secure online accounts, providing enhanced protection against a wide range of cyber threats, ensuring that your sensitive information remains safe. You can visit our webpage here for some of the reasons why MFA should be used, including for enhanced security, protection against phishing, and mitigation of password theft. You will also find useful tips for effective MFA use as well as information on what is changing in EDGE following this important update. Please do take the time to read over the webpage and if you are a Lead Admin at your organisation, please do share this information on to your end users.

The MFA functions can currently be tested on EDGE UAT (the environment for User Acceptance Testing). We are planning on releasing this new feature to EDGE Production UK, (the Live environment) on Thursday the 5th September 2024, where EDGE access for the UK may be restricted from 19:00 (BST) whilst the update takes place. Users in Canada will then receive MFA later in the month, with the planned release date being the 10th September, with all other countries following shortly after this date.

We hope the new MFA feature is useful to our users and we are delighted to now offer this security enhancement to EDGE.

For any questions or help on MFA, please email edge@soton.ac.uk

EDGE in Cyprus

EDGE in

Cyprus!

The Bank of Cyprus Oncology Centre (BOCOC) has been utilising EDGE since October 2023 with the aim to better manage the Clinical Trials and Research Programmes performed at the Centre. This implementation of EDGE has provided the necessary tools for the Clinical Trials Unit to monitor effectively, challenging, research programmes at a managerial level. At BOCOC EDGE is used for personnel workflow monitoring and study document version traceability as well as automatic traceability of deadlines and expiration dates. On the other hand, EDGE has helped the team with patient management including comprehensive participant data collection through custom-made forms based on their needs, traceability of participant appointments, recording Adverse Events, monitoring of study elements through graphical designs, financial management, etc. BOCOC expect to use EDGE in more than 10 key research programmes in the near future and we look forward to supporting them in their EDGE journey!

“EDGE has helped the team tremendously in patient management including comprehensive participant data collection through custom made forms based on our needs, traceability of patient appointments, recording Adverse Events, monitoring of study elements through graphical designs, financial management and more.”

— Elisavet Papageorgiou, Clinical Trials Coordinator, BOCOC

EVOLVE Conference Summary

The EDGE Conference

2024 Summary

We successfully delivered EVOLVE: Engage. Embrace. Empower. The EDGE 3 Conference on the 24th and 25th April 2024. Thank you to all of our delegates that we welcomed through the doors of the Vox Conference centre in Birmingham across the 2 days. The event was not only our first conference following COVID but was also a celebration post launch of EDGE version 3.

EVOLVE: Engage. Embrace. Empower. hosted by BBC Medical Editor, Fergus Walsh, aimed to bring the EDGE community of users back together to share best practice and improve methods of working within the clinical research industry, following the rollout of EDGE 3 - a brand-new version of EDGE which the unit delivered successfully throughout 2023 – 2024 following years of hard work and development.

The CPD certified event was the opportunity for research professionals to Engage and Embrace the new version of EDGE and leave ready to Empower their new skills and knowledge learnt, to ultimately advance research.

Celebrating paper to digital
EVOLVE also highlighted the evolution of technology within research - from paper to digital and showcased how EDGE has grown and development over the last 24 years, bringing its users more features and functions to improve efficiency and processes digitally. Some of these include the addition of an electronic delegation log, electronic site file and archiving capabilities, as well as the facility for sponsors to perform remote monitoring – all of these were highlighted in the conference’s agenda. Our speakers were EDGE Experts themselves who shared their progress with EDGE and showcased their very own case studies on their innovative digital tools for things like workload analysis, automated data transfer, finance and more.

Research Stories
At the EDGE Conference, we love to remind our users what research is all about - the patient. We were honored to have two real patient stories shared at EVOLVE. These talks were a great reminder on how important research is and how every person in the audience plays a vital part in improving health and care.

Presentations
These are now available under the EDGE Community Forum: Shareedge, which can be accessed by users via EDGE > Support > Community Forum. Speaker contact details have been provided on each presentation.

If you attended, we hope you found the conference useful. If you did not, we hope to see you at the next one!