Abstract

“IRCCS” - Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico - are (private or public) Italian Research Hospitals with excellence qualification partially funded by Italian Ministry of Health (MOH) and in some cases affiliated with public universities.
IRCCS research teams handle projects funded by MOH, pharmaceutical companies and private and/or public research grants. Research Administrators need different types of competences to manage this complex reality and to control the progress of milestones and deliverables of the projects.
Researchers and Scientific Directorate work together to achieve strategic goals, to attract increasingly competitively sought after funding, to engage with audiences within the hospital, and juggling the many administrative requests in between all this. In this scenario, we think it is certainly worth to contrive tailored tools for research management and administration.
REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a secure, web-based software platform designed to support data capture for research studies, providing:
1. an intuitive interface for validated data capture;
2. audit trails for tracking data manipulation and export procedures;
3. automated export procedures for seamless data downloads to common statistical packages;
4. procedures for data integration and interoperability with external sources
5. fast and flexible production-level database based on requirement
6. sharing of data between different roles in clinical research
Scientific Directorate of IRCCS Policlinico San Donato (PSD), in 2018 decided to use REDCap for eCRF, patient recruiting, patient monitoring, document management but also for investigator research management with national and international projects registry, clinical trials registry and Scientific Library registry.. These registries included technical specific aspects of research area.
Each Team Leader of a Clinical Unit can control online and update his research activities by REDCap, which is organised and managed by the Research Administration. In three years, the Scientific Directorate organized with REDCap the annually reports of 482 trials, 106 MOH and other funded projects and archived characteristics of 1482 scientific papers. The Trial registry includes information about type of study, Ethical committee approval, insurance policy and ongoing update during enrolment. Grant office database contains for each project the type of funding and deadlines, MOH classification, background, aims and annual results. Scientific Library manager updates for physicians every 3 months all papers printed and researchs could classify the property of each publication. PSD Scientific Direction.
Finally PSD use REDCap for institutional survey for education activities.
Based on the first three years, we are implemented this scientific tool as institutional CTMS aspects and important connection way between researchers and administrators.