A bit of EDGE history

A bit of EDGE history

Discover something new about the EDGE programme

The new year marks another milestone for EDGE, reaching 22 years of innovative clinical research management. As we enter the new year, we thought it would be a great opportunity to share some history behind EDGE and how it has grown throughout the years.

Let’s go back to the year 2000 when EDGE wasn’t actually called EDGE, it was called NOTIS (Network Oncology Trial System). Our Director, Professor James Batchelor, at this time was setting up Southampton’s Cancer Research Network, working for the University of Southampton, based at Southampton General Hospital. During this time James realised that no one actually knew what research was taking place on a broader scale, they only really knew what was happening locally. There were no web-based systems in place and all information that was needed to report back to the Coordinating Centre as a CRN was on paper. James knew that they needed to take an existing internal system (NOTIS) and transform it into something that was web-based and would allow other research centres to join and collaborate. The journey began. James and his colleague, David Miller (who was the only Developer at the time), set to work on making the idea into reality.

NOTIS changed in 2002 and it became ETIS (Enterprise Trial Information System). Unfortunately, when people Googled it, they quickly discovered it was the same acronym used for the global elephant tracking information system. This lead to lots of people trying to log in to track elephants instead of clinical trials! As you can imagine, this wasn’t ideal, so the name changed again for a third and final time to EDGE, with version 1 of the EDGE platform launching in 2005. You might be wondering, ‘What does EDGE stand for?’ The fact is EDGE was just a code name and it doesn’t actually stand for anything! Nevertheless, the name has certainly worked extremely well and has developed into the EDGE programme it is today.

Fast forward to 2007, where further members joined the team, including Lawrence Surey and Tobias Carlton-Prangnell. (This meant James and David had more company in the University of Southampton’s basement of the Duthie building!) Lawrence was employed to offer support to end-users and Tobias took the first Knowledge Officer position to manage the EDGE accounts. A year later, our second Developer started, Andy Bush, who along with James, David, and Lawrence, are still working here today.

As the years passed, more and more members joined the department to support the ever-growing EDGE user-base and as of today, EDGE is implemented in over 80% of the NHS throughout the UK whilst making an impact globally. EDGE subscriptions are now throughout Canada, as well as within a number of other countries including New Zealand, South Africa, Belgium, India and South Australia. We support over 32,000 users with still a relatively small team of 5 Knowledge Officers, 4 Developers, 1 Test Analyst and 1 Data Analyst. The department as a whole (CIRU) has grown massively, however, with close to 50 staff members, the majority of whom work on non-EDGE related things.

A lot of people think we (EDGE) are a commercial company, making lots and lots of money, with hundreds of staff but they couldn’t be more wrong. We are just a small team from a not-for-profit University department, but it’s safe to say we are doing BIG things.

3 (well 4) reasons to update your web browser

3 (well 4) reasons

to update your web browser

One of our key aims here at EDGE and The Clinical Informatics Research Unit, is to ensure that our users get the very best out of EDGE. One thing that can certainly help towards this and is something we try and encourage as much as possible, is ensuring that our users’ web browsers are kept up to date. “Why?” I hear you ask. Here are 3 (well 4) reasons why.  

1.)    Performance
Having an up to date browser means that EDGE will perform to the best of its ability – it is a web-based application after all. Especially in relation to its speed, which is of course very useful when you are needing to run those big reports with large amounts of data. Not only are old browsers much slower than the new ones, but they are also more likely to crash, which isn’t what anyone needs in their busy working day.

2.)    Display
Using an old browser can cause webpages to not appear how they should. For example, images may not be displayed and the display of content could be misaligned (definitely not what you want after all that data entry!)

3.)    Security
And, of course there is the security issue. Old browsers are much more prone to viruses, spyware and other threats, so it really is important to keep them up to date and your work secure.  

Oh, and there is one more reason why we recommend your web browser is updated. How could I forget? If you’re reading this and you’re one of our users of EDGE, then you should hopefully already know that we are working on a new version of EDGE, which we have been referring to as ‘EDGE 3’. In preparation of the launch next year, we are urging users to update their web browsers in order to get the best out of what EDGE 3 has to offer.

We also want to ensure that users are using one of the following up to date browsers: Microsoft Edge, Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or Opera. EDGE 3 will still operate on Internet Explorer 11, however this will come to end of life support from Microsoft on June 15th 2022. Therefore, we recommend that you switch to one of the other browsers mentioned above. We also recommend that users request help and support from their local IT team in updating their web browsers.

Hopefully this post has been useful in explaining why web browsers should be kept up to date, and that it encourages our users to check their browsers and update where necessary. If you do have any EDGE and browser compatibility questions, feel free to contact us.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. And if you are an EDGE user, thank you for your continued cooperation and involvement with the EDGE programme.   

Developer to Dr

Developer to Doctor

and back again

So you are a ‘Dr’, an actual medical Doctor? Is the question often asked when my wife insists I use my actual title; all the more confusing when I say I am a software engineer! So, a little explanation as to how I came to join the EDGE team in CIRU.

My family jokes that I learnt to code before I could read and write properly, and they are probably right. I loved computers, coding, and everything electronics. It was assumed and fostered during my school years, that computing was what I would go into career wise. However, age 6 I was also already interested in how computing and technology could help medicine; I even designed a chip to go into someone’s spine to cure their paralysis, all be it a very crude drawing.

After completing my computing degree and working in the industry for several years I became disillusioned and wanted to use my skills for a more front facing role which directly helped people. Surrounded by early career doctor friends I was encouraged, and completed my chemistry A level in 7 months, took the relevant GAMSAT and UKCAT tests, which led to interviews at medical schools for their 4-year degrees specifically designed for graduates.

My BM4 studies at the University of Southampton were challenging and fascinating. Personal highlights were neurology, psychiatry, and GP. As a foundation junior doctor, I had the privilege of caring for patients. I realised, however, that I would be able to contribute much more to medicine and patients care, if I used my knowledge and skills from both areas, computing, and medicine.

My time working within the computing industry gave me significant knowledge and insight into how software and systems are designed, developed, maintained, and the limitations that are ever present and need to be considered. Alongside this, an understating of producing software for end users and working with them to understand their needs.

My time working within a hospital gave me personal experience of the significant time pressures health care professionals are under. This is also an environment where frequently both paper and computer-based systems co-exists. I also gained real insight into areas where things could be achieved much faster; if the computer systems were created with a significant focus on allowing nurses, doctors, midwifes etc. to achieve the non-hands-on parts of their job, quickly and directly.

Working for CIRU within the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Southampton brings opportunities to combine my skills and knowledge of medicine and computing. I am currently one of the developers working on EDGE, working in a team with a strong aim on producing a clinical research management system which efficiently meets the needs of the users.

Agile Development

What does everyone mean

when they say Agile development?

You may have heard the Knowledge team talk about booking work into a ‘Sprint’ or discussing it in the ‘product backlog meeting’, so I thought it would be a good idea to sit down for a few minutes and explain what it all is, and why we describe ourselves as an Agile development unit using Scrum framework.

Companies have long employed development practices like Prince2 or Waterfall to create systems, but I find this a little restrictive, particularly when working in IT where the landscape and requirements change frequently. Agile is a project management philosophy that priorities early and frequent increments, allowing for changes throughout. Scrum is the framework that guides us through this. Scrum defines how we identify the work needed, who does the work, how and when it will be released. Agile and Scrum are a perfect partnership here, allowing us to be creative, regularly release updates and continuously move forward in developing EDGE.

We are always on the lookout for great ideas for functionality, these ideas form a list that we refer to as a Product Backlog. We can’t build everything at once so we make sure the Product Backlog is prioritized and under constant review so when we do meet with development, we know exactly what we want to build, how it needs to work and what should be done first.

While most updates are released monthly, internally we work on a two-week development sprint. Having a two-week sprint means our developers have a pretty good idea of what they can complete in the timeframe and this work becomes our sprint goal. The Sprint goal is set between our Product Owner and the development team. We agree this as a team, everyone is involved in the decision and therefore committed to the goal. We don’t have a lot of rules in scrum but there is one big one: The sprint is a locked event – no interruptions. As you can guess, interrupting the team mid-way through throws off their focus, leaves them less time for their original work and mild chaos ensues. It is probably one of the most difficult things for us Knowledge officers to do, we are always asking for “just one quick change?”, “just one little import?”. Anyway, that’s the rule and we do our best to stick with it.

At the end of the sprint, we have meetings which are called Reviews and Retrospectives, in short this is our chance to look at what we have achieved, make sure we are happy with it and for us to think about the sprint itself. Did we do everything we could, is there anything we would change next time? It’s this part where you see Scrum and Agile ideas blending again, the aim is continuous improvement. We aren’t going to try to build Rome/EDGE 3 in a day, but with small changes, tweaks here and there, and open discussions, everything keeps moving in the right direction.

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.

Research Innovation & Collaboration

Research Innovation & collaboration

450 miles apart

Stevie and Mat might be 450 miles apart, but that hasn’t stopped them on their collaborative journey to making research finance easier and more efficient through the utilisation of the EDGE Research Management Programme. So, sit back, grab a coffee and read on to discover more about their voyage to finance made easy.

Stevie, EDGE Database Manager from NHS Lothian and South East Scottish CRN, and Mat Davis, Research Information Manager from University Hospitals Dorset NHS FT, began working together following Mat’s discovery of Stevie’s finance import tool that he found within the EDGE support section. He explained this as ‘a godsend’ and that it was exactly what he wanted to do. Mat soon made contact with Stevie which kicked off their collaboration over emails and phone calls.

Then at the EDGE Conference 2020 they were able to meet in person where Stevie, Super User and regular speaker at the EDGE Conference (and EDGE Advocate of the Year 2019), gave a successful presentation sharing his finance import tool for EDGE. Mat was just one of the many EDGE users at the conference who was interested in Stevie’s finance tools and knew straight away that an automated approach would be much more beneficial and that him and Stevie were both working towards the same goal.

Soon after the EDGE Conference Stevie and Mat took to MS Teams to work together on advancing the finance tools further. They combined their skills and knowledge leading to an updated Cost Template Import Tool, which can convert a standard NIHR Costing Template into full breakdown EDGE cost templates in less than a minute, retaining all the detail of the original template. Doing the same manually takes many hours. Their new Finance Tracker Tool takes a standard EDGE finance report and breaks it down to a granular level of detail using the analysis codes created by the import tool, displaying visit numbers, visit names, procedures and investigations, departments etc. in an easy to read format. Not forgetting, their handy EDGE Assistant Tool, a web browser extension they created to help with the EDGE Finance Process. The EDGE Assistant Tool can quickly fill in multiple dates at once, convert cost template items to income items, helps associate additional/itemised costs with existing visits, and helps identify missed or repeated patient visits.

These innovative tools speed up the research finance process, and assist with invoicing, finance activity tracking, and finance management, including supporting additional departments with finance such as Pharmacy. Stevie and Mat were keen to share their tools with the EDGE community in a recent EDGE Advance webinar, which gained over 120 attendees from across the country.

Following this, the pair are now assisting other members of the EDGE community, helping them get these tools off the ground and in place at their organisations. They have future plans to continue working together to develop further new ideas for utilising EDGE. Not only have the duo created true innovative work they have become great friends and are true examples of what the EDGE Programme is all about: collaboration.

I know that I can speak on behalf of the whole team here at EDGE – we really do thank them for their hard work and dedication into this, as well as appreciate the help and guidance they provide to the EDGE community.

To finish, here’s a quote from the both Stevie and Mat:

“The collaborative experience of working together has been incredibly rewarding and instrumental in the development of finance tools for use with EDGE, which we believe will really help the community. We would encourage everyone to share their experiences and processes with colleagues in other organisations.”

— Stevie Barre, NHS Lothian & South East SCRN & Mat Davis, University Hospitals Dorset NHS FT