Customer Story: UBC

Patients’ lives depend on drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry depends on companies like UBC to provide exceptional late-stage clinical development services.

Consider the depth and scope of this company’s clients: they include the pharmaceutical, biotech, generic and drug delivery industries. Specific services include the following: Pivotal phase II-III trials, pediatric studies, safety studies, risk management programs, and phase IV commitment programs, among others. What’s more, UBC has generated an international reputation for exceptionally well-run clinical trials backed by a loyal, highly experienced staff of experts for almost thirty years. Their Latin-American partnership alone “has over 300 committed associates.” In August 2004, UBC was named to Ingram’s 19th Year Corporate Report of the 100 Fastest Growing Businesses. Furthermore, recent growth for the company has derived from 90% repeat business, which testifies to industry trust and respect. Small wonder then that UBC must rely on a robust, state of the art information management system to expedite many of its services. The company now offers an innovative and flexible data management department with the following services: fully validated data processing systems, real time fax input capability, electronic data capture, fully customized reporting options, and imaging/scanning services. At the heart of this data management system, processing the large volumes of paper generated during the conduct of studies, is Delta Systems’ DeltaDOCK software with the Routed Messenger workflow component.

Before DeltaDOCK

In the days before DeltaDOCK, the original Clinical Drug Research Case Report Forms (containing patient record and drug trial information) were passed around the requisite departments for review and data entry. Regulatory Documents (for instance the researcher’s medical license and Laboratory Certification information) were kept in file folders and copied or faxed as necessary. Consider that at any one time thousands of documents are active, and clearly the big risk with this system is loss or misplacement. Other inefficiencies were the time to hunt down a targeted document and the need to rely on multiple hand markings to verify workflow process. Additionally, any documents subject to external review had to be hard-copied and mailed or faxed.

Objectives

Based on the inefficiencies described above, Dan Burm, Manager of Information Technology with over 35 years of experience, and his staff formulated some specific goals for the ideal solution. They wanted a system that would image every piece of paper that came by US mail, be able to import the image of every fax received via the RightFax Server, use OCR numbers on the Case Report Form to index that document, manage document workflow, permit the user to view an image on one screen, while entering data on another screen, retrieve documents no matter where in the workflow process, transmit documents electronically, and manage even higher volumes of documents more efficiently with less overhead. With DeltaDOCK Now, UBC can account for every piece of paper they receive; “things don’t get ‘lost’ in the office any longer,” says Dan Burm. Also, using OCR to electronically index the CRF documents has led to a more stream-lined, documented process, and this indexing feature permits immediate document retrieval. Another major advantage of the new system is that operators can display the document image through DeltaDOCK on one display screen and have the data entry program on the other display screen. This and many other benefits mean that labor is managed much more productively and that UBC has been winning new contracts for larger drug studies. In short, DeltaDOCK has enabled this company to reach all its goals of the ideal data management system and simultaneously earn the wholehearted support of the staff.

The Future with DeltaDOCK

UBC anticipates being able to handle larger volumes of work efficiently, leading to an even greater competitive edge in the marketplace. Also, the company plans to use the Imaging/Workflow products eventually in Human Resources and Accounting. On a final note, Dan Burm offers praise for the high level of technical support provided by the team at Delta Systems: "The dedication of these individuals to making these systems work in our environment has contributed greatly to the success we have achieved with them."