Ensuring a Successful and Collaborative SDLC Process

At Advarra, it’s our mission to ensure safer, smarter, faster clinical research every step of the way in the research process. One example of this approach is the way we promote and encourage research sites to own their technology, allowing them to ensure their solutions meet their specific needs and adhere to site workflows. How do we make this happen? This article outlines Advarra’s collaborative approach to the software development lifecycle (SDLC) process and how sites benefitted from it.

Encouraging Open Communication to Enhance Collaboration

Communicating directly with technology customers provides us with a better understanding of site needs and challenges at a granular level. A unique way the Advarra product management team accomplishes this is through regular “collaboration calls.”

Led by product managers, Advarra’s monthly collaboration calls involve dozens of customers providing input on how to further develop the product’s roadmap to not only fit their needs, but enhance research operations industry-wide. These ideas are then developed further and brought back to collaboration calls for community buy-in, evolving our product with direct input from our customers.

Another way to encourage communication is through forums, such as Advarra’s Onsemble Community. While community members have an always-on platform to ask questions and spark conversation, they also have the opportunity to meet, learn, and collaborate twice a year at the Onsemble Conference. During the Virtual 2021 Spring Onsemble Conference, panelists from Lifespan Cancer Institute, Duke Cancer Institute, Karmanos Cancer Institute, and Duke University provided insights about their experiences using Advarra’s eRegulatory Management System. A key theme woven throughout the presentation was the importance of collaboration between their organizations and the Advarra team. Not only did panelists feel empowered to suggest ideas and help them come to fruition, but it helped them to better understand product capabilities. Having an open communication relationship with a vendor enables sites to fulfill their needs and use the software to its fullest extent, and opens the door for a single organization—or even a single person—to provide insight to shape a product used industry-wide.

Encouraging Site Centricity to Advance the Industry

As we continue to move forward as an industry, site centricity and its impact on clinical trial success is more important than ever. Site centricity benefits everyone, including sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs), by focusing on empowering those closest to the research and participants. By developing workflows and technology solutions to address challenges faced by sites, we can enable more efficient trials, improving the participant experience and ultimately delivering treatments to market faster.

When sponsors and sites begin to work together and aim to become more site-centric, it allows sites to flourish. Through this approach, sites using technology have built top-tier programs at their institutions. 86% of National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers and 55% of clinical and translational science award (CTSA) programs use Advarra’s technology. By working together with the site in mind, it not only enables a more efficient SDLC process, but resulted in successful clinical trials, positively impacting sponsors and CROs in the process as well.

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