Oregon Health Science University Improves Clinical Trial Budget Management

By the numbers

90

Employees Tracking Time

60+

Reports

At the Knight Cardiovascular Institute, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) is dedicated to finding cures to cardiovascular disease, improving cardiovascular health, and driving new innovations for cardiovascular imaging, cardiovascular device design, and cardiac surgery and transplantation.

The university participates in hundreds of clinical trials to help doctors find ways to improve health and treat diseases.

Using ClickTime, the Knight Cardiovascular Institute is better able to track, understand, and manage the costs of these clinical trials.

Capture True Costs of Pre-screening and Other Work

“Every clinical trial is different, but ClickTime allows us to identify patterns and trends that help us create more accurate budgets,” said Susanne McGlothlin, Research Administrator at OSHU’s Knight Cardiovascular Institute.

“We’re able to do a deep dive into monitoring, pre-screening, and other costs, some of which are not always captured in typical budgets. At the end of the day, this allows us to have more effective negotiation with our sponsors and continue to do what we do best — perform world-class research.”

ClickTime automatically associates employee costs with the time tracked against any particular task or trial. In doing so, it provides a wealth of insights that allow for a more in-depth understanding of clinical trial budgets.

“ClickTime shows us how much time we are spending with direct patient contact, with data entry, with pre-screening, with monitoring — it helps us analyze our costs and improve our operations in so many ways,” said McGlolthlin.

“We're able to do a deep dive into monitoring, pre-screening, and other costs, some of which are not always captured in typical budgets. At the end of the day, this allows us to have more effective negotiation with our sponsors and continue to do what we do best — perform world-class research.”

Susanne McGlothlin

Research Administrator at OSHU's Knight Cardiovascular Institute

More Effective Sponsor Negotiations

Sometimes, certain tasks can take longer than was originally budgeted for. The data in ClickTime quickly highlights when this is the case.

“Sponsors may budget a specific amount of time for electronic data capture or other work. With ClickTime, we’re able to look at both historical costs and predict how certain tasks will take us in the future,” said McGlothlin. “There’s no guesswork with ClickTime. We have more data than ever about how we operate our trials.”

Reports from ClickTime are available in real time and surface outliers, trends, and patterns that enable more effective management of clinical trials.

“We negotiate our budgets with our sponsors before we start work on the trial. We have a good guess of what those costs might be, but with ClickTime, we’re able to create much more accurate predictions.”

Simple, Powerful Reports

For time tracking to be effective, it has to be a seamless process, both for entering time and reporting on outcomes.

“ClickTime is so easy and intuitive,” said McGlolthlin. “Our team was able to get started tracking time almost immediately.”

“Our data is immediately recorded and analyzed — ClickTime does in an instant what used to take more than a day and a half of work! There’s no more double entry of data or time spent building complicated reports.”

Once time in entered in the platform, more than 60 pre-built reports, dashboards, and visual summaries highlight the true costs of clinical trials.

“It’s critically important that we understand how much each trial costs us in terms of employee resources,” McGlolthlin. “ClickTime gives us great data. It shows us what resources are being used per trial, which allows us to more effectively plan for future budgets.”