EDGE 3
launched in the UK
After launching EDGE 3 in South Africa and New Zealand, we are thrilled to now share that the new and approved EDGE software was rolled out across the UK earlier this month. EDGE 3 was launched across thousands of sites in England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland and is our biggest launch yet. To mark this event, we caught up with Mikayala King, Research Governance and QA Manager from University Hospitals Southampton (UHS) to see how the launch has gone at one of our biggest UK organisations.
Despite Mikayala having an MHRA inspection going on with intense preparations, she shared with us that the launch of EDGE 3 has gone really smoothly and how there was lots of excitement around the new version:
“Everyone was really excited to get to see the new EDGE version and I suspect all through the weekend people were trying to see if it was live yet. When it went live, word went around the Trust in a flash, and everyone was happy they still had their trials and all of the information in workflows, etc. had been moved over so smoothly and they could still access everything.”
During the interview we asked Mikayala how her users have handled the change. Her response was again very positive and she shared a few things which has helped manage the rollout across the Trust:
“Mostly people have been happy to see the change and excited to see how it all works and what they can do and see now that they couldn’t before. We have set up a working group to manage the change and to look at functionality of EDGE 3 to see where there are opportunities to improve or increase our use of the system. The EDGE champions were all involved in the user acceptance testing so have seen the system before. They were already on hand to guide people and our generic inbox was manned by experienced EDGE users to sort out any problems.”
We asked Mikayala what advice and tips she would give other Lead Administrators / EDGE Leads and she replied with the following:
“Don’t panic! A lot of the work has been done for you with the videos and training that EDGE have supplied. Make sure there is somewhere for people to go if they encounter a problem and don’t let them use it as an excuse to reduce their use of EDGE. Make sure users have ample warning if they are not going to be able to access EDGE whilst the update takes place, so they can prepare and gather information they need before the move over. In EDGE 3, the Notifications automatically revert to default of telling users everything so make sure you have some guidance to hand to help users if they want to switch them off!”
Lastly, we were keen to find out how EDGE 3 will drive things forward at UHS and we were very happy to hear Mikayala’s plans for the updated delegation log:
“We are already embracing the new delegation log. It solved an issue the day after launch in that we were struggling to get a PI at a remote site to sign the delegation log for a study. We were able to customise the delegation log for the study and get the PI to sign through EDGE. This customisability is absolutely key in making this function much more usable. The working group is going to be looking at all of the functionality and I can feedback on where we go with EDGE in the future!”
The UK launch marks the biggest rollout of EDGE 3, and we are so delighted that it has finally happened, after years and years of work behind the scenes here at CIRU. We are now working on plans for the next country to receive EDGE 3. More information will be coming as soon as!