CRMS Implementation for Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health - Center for American Indian Health

Goal: The mission of the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health is to work in partnership with American Indian tribes to raise the health status and self sufficiency of American Indian people to the highest possible level. This mission is accomplished in part through research projects focused on biomedical and behavioral health issues that disproportionately affect Native American populations. For the past 25 years, the Center has conducted numerous phase III trials, epidemiologic studies, disease surveillance activities and community-based projects among Native American communities, primarily in the southwest United States.

Eugene V. Millar, PhD, infectious disease epidemiologist at the Center for American Indian Health (CAIH), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses how mdlogix clinical research software products are helping the Center improve its research activities.

Challenge:

The Center’s activities encompass a broad diversity of research topics, study methodologies, data collection methods and data management systems. Over 150 personnel from 10 different study sites conduct daily research activities. Without a unified data system for the collection, management and dissemination of study data, it became very difficult to manage research projects, to review real-time study data and to conduct final analyses once the studies were concluded. “Streamlining our data management has been a problem for us,” Dr. Millar said. “As we looked at the adoption of even more studies in the future, it was clear we needed a much better system to improve our workflow.”

Solution:

The Center is incorporating the mdlogix Subject & Protocol Registry, Protocol Schema & Patient Calendar, and Case Report Forms modules. “What the mdlogix CRMS offers is a robust informatics platform that really suits the needs of public health researchers, particularly those conducting field-based research and managing it from afar,” Dr. Millar said. “It has been our goal to have a single data management system onto which all of our studies would be built and managed. It is essential that the system design and function makes sense to all the people who need to use it. The deployment of CRMS will enable us to do better research by improving our access to available data, advancing our decision-making capacity, and increasing the value of communication with our field-based personnel. Ultimately, we hope this will all translate into better health outcomes in the communities we serve.”

The Client Said:

"The Center evaluated the products of five different solution providers. A lot of them came to us, gave their product demonstration and said, 'This is what you'll get.' They didn't ask us what we needed, and whether their product suited our needs. mdlogix worked with us. They asked us what we wanted and they built a clinical research management system (CRMS) that addresses our specific needs. Together with mdlogix, we have developed a data management system that encompasses all of our research activities, from subject enrollment to regulatory document management to generating reports and exporting data. Most importantly, the system addresses two of our highest priorities we sought in a data management system: (1) that it is highly functional, and (2) that it is intuitive to the end user."
Eugene V. Millar, PhD
Infectious Disease Epidemiologist
The Center for American Indian Health (CAIH), Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health