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!

Launch of new EDGE Community Forum

New EDGE

Community Forum

To mark the completion of the EDGE 3 rollout globally we have brought a new tool for collaboration to the EDGE Community, a brand-new community forum, we have called Shareedge. The forum is a place for all Users to connect with other Users from the EDGE Community from across the globe and share best practice.

Purpose

The purpose of the EDGE Community Forum is to provide a platform for EDGE users to freely communicate with one another, sharing ideas and tips on using EDGE effectively. This is achieved through the space functionality that the forum offers, allowing individual groups to be set up where discussions can happen.

What groups can I be a part of?

Spaces, also known as groups, are available to join which will generate content for your Forum’s newsfeed. Note: Spaces are set up by the EDGE Team. Currently, we have two groups available for joining. The first is the EDGE Finance Tools working group, run by Mat Davis and Stevie Barre from the EDGE Community. The second is an EDGE Development group, where we are able to post ideas for discussion and feedback. You will also see an Articles group where you can read community features such as Super User Q&A’s, User Top 5 Tips, as well as a space for Events, so we can keep you informed of any upcoming conferences and webinars.  

How to access the Community Forum

A User can access the Community Forum through logging into EDGE and going to the ‘Support’ Tab, then clicking ‘Community Forum’. Note: If your email address is used across multiple EDGE accounts, you will only be able to use the Community Forum under one of these accounts, so please ensure you are logged into the correct EDGE account before accessing the Forum. Once logged in, we recommend you update your User Profile, including adding a photo of yourself. Then head to Spaces to join any relevant groups.

If you’re an EDGE User and you are reading this, we hope you join the community forum and enjoy this additional tool. It is something we are planning on expanding over time, bringing you more working groups to be part of and more resources to learn from.

EDGE Environments

The EDGE

Environments

As we are at the end of the EDGE 3 rollout with just one country to go, we thought we would give our Users a little update on the EDGE environments available/soon to be available.

If you’re a User and you’re reading this, you know EDGE is accessed via a web browser. Each country who has a subscription with EDGE accesses their instance of EDGE with a country-specific URL. But there isn’t just one EDGE environment available to Users, there are in fact 3: EDGE Production, EDGE UAT, and EDGE Demo. Each environment has a unique URL and can be identified and differentiated by the logo displayed on the Login page and at the top left-hand side of the system when logged in. We thought we would share some information explaining what the 3 different environments are and what they should be used for.

EDGE Production is for Users to access the live instance of EDGE. Within this instance there should be no testing, training, or demonstrations carried out. There is one live instance of EDGE per country.

EDGE UAT (User Acceptance Testing) is for the assessment of new functionality only. New functions and features are released to UAT for User evaluation before being released to the Production environment. No live data should be entered and stored in EDGE UAT. There is one EDGE UAT instance for all countries. This has UK-specific settings.

Finally, EDGE Demo. Users can utilise this environment as a training and demo instance of EDGE. No live data should be entered and stored in EDGE Demo. There will eventually be one demo instance of EDGE per country. We are working on this, but we can confirm the UK’s EDGE Demo is available now.

Since you know a bit more about the different environments, you may be wondering “How can I get access?” Well, that answer is easy. Just contact your organisation’s Lead Administrators (their details can be found under the Support tab) and they can set up an account for you on the environment you would like access to.  

EDGE Production, EDGE UAT and EDGE Demo Logos

New Year Update from Marcomms

New Year

Update from Marcomms

Its January 24th as I write this, 3 months until the EDGE 3 Conference which just seems crazy as I remember this time last year planning had begun, and we were all thinking “ohhh well there’s loads of time!” But, as we all know time flies! I suppose it would make sense before I go on further to do a quick introduction. I am Beth Mathis and I have worked at the Clinical Informatics Research Unit since 2015, first joining as a Knowledge Support Analyst where I worked closely with the Knowledge Officers, covering support and EDGE implementations. I picked up on some extra responsibility in EDGE communications which began with sending emails out to our users to let them know of releases, downtime and so on. This naturally led to me taking on a new role as EDGE Knowledge Marketing Specialist where I was responsible of a variety of different things such as branding for EDGE, promoting of EDGE, increasing our user communication channels through a Marketing Plan and of course organizing the EDGE Conference! Just last year I became CIRU Marketing Manager as I now have a more varied role and responsibility, not just focuses on EDGE but our entire unit.

Fergus Walsh, BBC Medical Editor

Anyway, that’s enough of that. Back to the conference. The 2024 event EVOLVE is our first event back since the pandemic and it follows the global rollout of EDGE version 3. Being over 97% fully booked, it is by far the most in-demand conference we have put on and we are delighted about that. We have chosen to return to the Vox Conference Centre in Birmingham this April 24-25th due to its flexible and modern space, and of course its location which seems to work well for our UK userbase and overseas attendees. We are extremely excited to announce that Fergus Walsh, BBC Medical Editor, will be returning for his third EDGE Conference as host. We have also been successful in obtaining CPD (Continue Professional Development) for the EVOLVE conference so delegates can expect to be awarded CPD points for their attendance. If you haven’t booked your spot or want to know more, just click here.

The conference is of course a really big and important Community based activity, but we do understand that not all of our users are able to attend due to various reasons such as budget restrictions and time away from work. We totally get that, so this year we are working on increasing what we offer our users in terms of more support material and collaboration/networking opportunities. One of the first new additions to our community offerings is an in-depth EDGE Finance training video by the one and only Stevie Barre (CIRU Programme Manager and ex-end User). Finance is certainly a hot topic at this year’s conference, and it seems to be what our users want to learn about, so it only made sense we would start with this area for our first EDGE 3 training video. We are also working on an online community forum which will be accessible to all Users to encourage the sharing of EDGE best practice and provide an environment to ‘work together’ online. More information on these new additions will be in our monthly Admin Newsletter Knowedge. If you wish to be added in to receive this communication, just drop us an email. Oh and do also use this email, if you want to get involved in featuring your organisations work with EDGE within a futures newsletter which is sent to our global userbase, we would love to hear from you. Well, I am sure I will be back here soon with another EDGE update! Thanks for reading.