PINT has just received an award for a private extranet designed to support the collaboration needs of pharmaceutical clinical investigators. This is a password-protected web site that is not accessible to the general public.

Objectives:

• Support clinical researchers - To provide broad based accessibility for clinical researchers working on trials sponsored by Biogen IDEC involving the Zevalin product. In the past this communication has been via phone, fax, mail and email an increasing strain on the limited resources of the Biogen IDEC clinical support team. Biogen IDEC wanted to provide researchers a web-based tool to self-serve for resources and create a more efficient communications loop.
• Prove ROI - Biogen IDEC needed to understand if their investigator audience was being properly served and desired to have a robust tracking and reporting function to prove the value of the site. In addition, Biogen IDEC can see whether investigators are coordinating with the group (part of their contractual responsibilities).
• Ability to maintain site - Biogen IDEC needed to have the ability to maintain rapidly changing volume of content.
• Highest security for data - The clinical trials information is highly proprietary and confidential requiring very critical security level

Target Audiences:

• 40 clinical researchers working from all over the country accessing the Internet from a variety of unknown technology environments such as connection speed, monitor size and browser type.

Techniques:

• PINT developed a password protected web site supported by a very wide technology platform. The site provides slide kits, the Biogen IDEC newsletters (trial summary), events calendar, events archive, resources, links and a directory of investigators. Poster and slide templates are available for download to ensure that clinical presentations will be consistent with authorized Biogen IDEC standards. The site provides a centralized repository of up to date information critical to this unique user group for quick reference.
• Tracking and reporting - The site provides the Biogen IDEC clinical team with a fact based analysis to prove return on investment for the project. Biogen IDEC can track users to see what data they are accessing and how the system is serving their investigators. The system tracks and provides detailed up to the minute custom reports on specific users. This type of data is not possible to view with simple server log analysis such as reporting software like WebTrends. It shows when users logged in and out, frequency they accessed the system, what content they downloaded, page visited, what are the most popular documents accessed. The site is currently being modified to provide additional reporting capabilities.
• A content management system (CMS tools) that allows Biogen IDEC clinical to maintain the site without any programming skills. They can designate the site administrators, add new investigators and assign secure names and passwords. For the next iteration the site will feature full content management for all sections and will allow for upload of all content including poster templates, slide kits, resources, different presentation templates and events content.
• The site features a secure password protected log in from the pubic Zevalin site to a researcher area. ( 128 bit encryption (similar to financial institutions for the highest level of protection for the content)

Result: The site has been very successful for Biogen IDEC. 3 other sites are in development for other Biogen IDEC clinical trial programs to support their research teams.