The OC16 Conference (Oct 3-4 in Boston) is two weeks away and I’m thrilled to be there to introduce the all-new OpenClinica.
The OpenClinica project started 11 years ago with two goals in mind: use the web to help clinical researchers get better, faster data, and champion an open technology model that gives users the power to extend and customize it to their needs.
These goals remain our main focus and are as important as ever. Achieving them improves quality, gets new discoveries to patients faster, improves patient satisfaction, and reduces costs. But clinical trials keep getting more complex, expensive, and harder. Better technology is a must, and it’s time for OpenClinica to evolve.
Here’s a quick preview of what we’ll be showing at OC16. It has two main components:
1. OpenClinica 4 is a self-service e-source, patient engagement, and EDC platform with low cost of entry, rapid startup, optimized workflows, and massive scalability. It is designed to save time, work great in mobile environments, and encourage better collaboration. Picture:
- Working with your colleagues in real time on protocol design, in a visual, drag-and-drop way. When ready, its one-click to deploy to test, training, and production environments,
- A fast, mobile-friendly, flexible forms engine with real-time edit checks, powerful expression logic, and advanced multimedia capabilities
- Quickly, seamlessly, and securely inviting other users. Have them trained and working productively with the system in a self-service, fully automated way, and
- Smart & customizable reports, dashboards, and queues that help you work better.
2. The OpenClinica 4 Toolkit is an open, modular environment for building health and research apps that guarantees high-integrity, trustworthy data and adherence to rigorous standards of quality. Developers in healthcare need to be able to easily build mobile & web-based health apps with powerful data collection, workflow, messaging, and visualization capabilities. A junior developer or a healthcare professional with some web programming background will be able to set up a development environment in 5-10 minutes, get a free developer key, and build a ‘hello world’ module in under 30. The toolkit, with a smart mix of modern web & mobile tools, the right amount of domain-specific intelligence, and guaranteed data integrity & security, can unlock immense productivity and innovation. The fundamental features OpenClinica is already built around– trustworthy data provenance, flexible data models, secure REST APIs, and high quality–are a great basis for such a toolkit.
Some key parts of the OpenClinica 4 technology have already been in use for over a year now in OpenClinica Participate. OpenClinica LLC’s engineers have been hard at work on the first four components of OC v4: the protocol designer, the new form engine, a multi-tenant cloud architecture with single sign on, and self-service training. We will be putting these into use in trials early next year. Other components, like customizable dashboards, workflows, and improved reporting, and the toolkit will soon follow.
Over the past several months, 25 dedicated members of the OpenClinica community, with expertise in clinical trials, EDC, ePRO, data management, and community-based development, have worked in five advisory groups – EDC, Study Startup, eSource, API, and Community – providing strategic direction and ideas to shape the new OpenClinica.
Want to find out more? OC16’s opening panel will have a member of each advisory group sharing their view on where OpenClinica is going, and throughout the day we’ll have live demos, discussion, and training on OpenClinica 4. Come join us at OC16!