ICON: Clinical Research Organization Clinical Management System All CaseStudies

Mapping Workflows to Design a Global Clinical Management System

The Challenge

ICON, a global provider of outsourced development services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, approached Electronic Ink to evaluate the current user interface for their clinical trial database management system. Manual data entry, cumbersome report builders, and overlapping responsibilities made it difficult for project managers to understand the overall health of any one study. ICON had a difficult decision to make: build on their current system, or buy off-the-shelf and customize a new system.

The Electronic Ink Solution

To understand what ICON needed from a clinical trial management system, Electronic Ink examined their clinical trial management process to document requirements for a system that supported the process accurately and efficiently. The goal: to design a system that would work for users rather than against them. Workflow diagrams and future requirements documentation allowed ICON to envisage how different departments would interact and share information across systems and continents. The result was an ideal model against which to measure candidate systems.

Net Result and Impact

Visualizing how departments collaborate with one another both digitally and in-person outside the current system opened ICON’s eyes to the communication and collaboration needs of their employees. ICON had to decide to build or buy a new system. Electronic Ink’s insights and workflow analyses saved ICON the headache of implementing a system that would not meet their communication and collaboration needs. Electronic Ink delivered a solid set of requirements to measure candidate systems and new insights into how people communicate in a global organization.