Ask Me Anything – Tools for Top Performing Sites
Kristen Bosse, Director of Product Development, is CRIO’s in-house product guru. In this Ask Me Anything, a CRIO expert roundup, Kristen discusses CRIO’s products, UX design and beta testing, and shares recommendations for sponsors looking to identify the best sites for their trials.
What differentiates CRIO’s products from any other products on the market?
We started building our products specifically for sites, when everyone else was building for sponsors. We went on-site, learned their workflows, saw their pain-points, and built a platform that would support and enhance their current processes. We were pioneers and innovators in eClinical solutions. Many people in this industry are stuck because they think “this is how it’s always been…” Change is hard. Raymond Nomizu, CEO and co-founder at CRIO, has an amazing ability to look at any role, for example, a data manager, monitor, coordinator, etc., and really get to the bottom of their core needs to do their job effectively. It’s not about taking someone’s current process and finding a way to perform that in an electronic solution. It’s about completely disrupting their current process, discussing their true needs, and building out an entirely novel, more efficient process to fit those needs.
What has been the effect on your product roadmap from customer feedback?
The majority of our roadmap comes from customer feedback. Our product was built specifically for site workflows, so it is imperative to listen to their experience using the product in practice and adapt quickly.
How do usability and UX design affect the CRIO product?
From my perspective UX is crucial. Whenever we, or the client, have an idea for a new feature or an update, we mostly know what we want for the end result. I need the ability to do “X.” How does this new ability affect my existing workflow in the platform? How do we implement it in such a way that flows with their current process, while being easy to use? All of these discussions happen during the UX process. Not to mention, CRIO’s UX team is also responsible for our user research program, which goes directly to the customer to source feedback, specifically around usability of a certain module/feature/workflow in the system. They take that feedback and discuss engineering and product with the end goal of adding some of those items to the roadmap. The end result is a product that is customized for sites’ unique workflows.
From your perspective, what is one piece of advice for life science companies running clinical trials?
Do not resist change – embrace it. Clinical trial sites are busier now than ever and so the idea of implementing an electronic solution can seem overwhelming, taxing, a distraction from the patients, etc. However, when sites take the time in the short-term to invest in implementing a platform like CRIO, they will instantly see a return in efficiencies, process improvement, more visibility into their trial data, enable their CRAs to remote monitor, and so much more. In the long term, sites will see how the implementation of eSource, CTMS, eReg, allows them to do their job better, and faster!
