Automating record-keeping in medical research

A user-friendly system allows medical researchers and their assistants to set up, conduct and record medical research projects

We built a tool to let medical researchers automate the record-keeping process, accelerating medical research projects and freeing researchers and assistants from repetitive record-keeping and data entry tasks.

Accelerating recording of medical research data

A system for automating record-keeping and data entry for medical researchers, that ensures data accuracy, protects patient confidentiality and improves resource allocation and study reliability.

Provides a comprehensive toolkit to monitor patients’ interactions with the study, track their attendance and engagement with clinicians, and improve statistical precision in medical research.

The end of manual data entry in medical research

The system is customizable to the unique needs of institutions, areas of research interest and specific trials. The tool Lightpoint created can be used to monitor patients’ visiting schedules, staff schedule tracking, single patient ID, laboratory management and task allocation and tracking across studies, research groups and organizations.

Medical research challenges

Medical researchers face strict requirements: highly-accurate tests must be carried out and recorded within given timeframes, in order to generate study data that is replicable and reliable enough to form the basis for decisions on which, ultimately, health and lives depend. Yet nearly all medical research data is still recorded manually, adding unnecessary hours of effort and increasing the likelihood of errors both of recording and replication.

Key challenges include:

Trial data input

Trial data is live, time-limited and complex. And most data input is manual, using legacy digital systems or pen and paper. Accuracy and timeliness suffer. So does accessibility for analysis.

Patient engagement

Patients drop out of trials more frequently and are less likely to participate, citing increasingly onerous protocols and declining rewards.

Technological transition

Technology is moving into healthcare at a rapid rate. Researchers may find themselves asked to use digital tools that don’t fully answer their needs, or navigating a landscape of tools that are supposed to interlock seamlessly but instead overlap, duplicate and confuse.

Regulatory compliance

Strict regulations govern the recording and storage of personally identifying information, including patient data from research trials. Even where compliance is achieved, demonstrating is sometimes difficult with slow, inaccurate and insecure legacy systems.

There’s a clear need for medical researchers to get a tool that records, stores, manages and analyses patient data, effectively and accurately, setting them free for more valuable tasks and easing the burdens on staff and patients alike.

Creating a medical research system

We created a medical research system that automates parts of the record-keeping and data entry processes, letting project designers create their own forms from preset fields and fill them in on digital equipment before adding them to a searchable library and building reports and analysis from them.

Key features of the system

The system we built solved major problems in the space, utilizing these key features:

Customizable back office management

The back office management portion of the system can be customized to create structured records of discrete events like patient visits, and forms can be built ad hoc from arbitrary fields.

Data monitoring

The system facilitates monitoring of individual patients’ visit data and ID, as well as tracking staff data like scheduling. Lab management and task management for medical staff are also supported.

Reporting and statistical toolkit

The system comes with tools for generating reports and statistics on resource allocation, service process optimization, and patient and staff activities and interactions.

Security

We built a tool that preserves security and privacy, both by implementing best practices and meeting regulatory requirements and by a system of permissioned access managed by administrators.

Auditable changelog

Each change within any form on the system is logged, recorded and timestamped. The entire system can be searched and audit trails for staff-patient interactions are created automatically.

Patient satisfaction

Each change within any form on the system is logged, recorded and timestamped. The entire system can be searched and audit trails for staff-patient interactions are created automatically.

Platform features include:

Permissioned access to resources both inside and beyond the system
Data processing powered by Machine Learning
Performance monitoring of the user engagement module
Multiple integrations across industry-standard tools
Contemporary technology stack
Intruder detection and blocking system
Allows assistants to create, set up and conduct medical research
Permits flexibly-structured records and forms
Tracks staff and patient activities and interactions, resource allocations and more
Generates reliable, accurate statistics for granular, data-driven decision-making
Exceeds patient expectations for efficiency and ease of use
Reduces costs by efficiency savings
Customizable to meet the needs of organizations and projects
Dashboards and analytics
Security as standard by permissioned access
All activities logged

Tech stack:

.NET 4.0 (C#)

ASP.NET MVC4

Entity Framework

LINQ

JavaScript / jQuery

Ajax

MSSQL 2012

Visual Studio 2014

Redmine

SVN

Results

We delivered the system to our client, one of the leading medical research organizations, and they have used it successfully to improve patient access and retention, drive efficiency savings and improve the accuracy and reliability of their record-keeping.