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Utah - Activation of Clinical Trials

The University of Utah continues to develop cutting-edge research to enhance the lives of current and future generations to come. One of our missions is to cultivate a national and internationally leading research community through excellence, innovation, and interdisciplinary research while building strong relationships with our industry partners. To do this, we strive to streamline the study activation process to help complete studies in a more timely and efficiently.

Utah Activation of Clinical Trials (UACT) began in 2020 to better understand and improve study startup University-wide. UACT’s operational team will be tracking trial activation from the first investigator contact through the recruiting stage to help minimize barriers in the process. A University-wide 100-day startup will be the standard for Industry trials.

UACT continues to work with departments and divisions to improve the startup process across campus and more accurately track and disseminate trial opportunities. To learn more about our current activities, please contact Stacey.Peterson@hsc.utah.edu (Executive Assistant).

U-ACT Steps

UACT Performance

Over 1,600 trial activation workflow step dates and 5,500 supporting data points have been compiled, linked, and visualized into an interactive Tableau dashboard for 183 industry sponsored trials across 29 departments. A University wide benchmark average has been established for each trial activation workflow step. These baseline averages will enable the UACT working group to perform year over year and month over month level analysis to monitor future trial activation performance and process improvements. A department level Tableau report has been developed with goals of monthly distribution to department leads for frequent and accurate trial activation health checks. Department leads are now able to easily compare department level metrics against the University wide averages to identify process bottlenecks and cases where intervention is needed.

 

Trial Duration Graph

UACT Committee

Rob Singleton - Faculty Lead  Dixie Thompson - Project Lead

Rachel Hess – Leadership  Erin Rothwell – Leadership 

Jamie Dwyer – Leadership  Luca Boi – Value Engineer

Brent Brown – OSP  Vanessa Bryant – Sr. Budget Analyst

Emily Campbell – Liaison Team  Alfred Cheung – Liaison Team

Ann Johnson – IRB    Scott Low – Director, Research Administration

Jessica Moehle – HCI    Trent Matheson – Program Tracking & Evaluation

Casi Morales – Grants & Contracts   Stacey Peterson – Liaison Team 

Jaci Skidmore – CRSO  Nathaniel Tevlin – Liaison Team 

Theresa Werner - HCI    Jon White – VA, Liaison Team

Jason Young – Director, PIVOT  Aaron Duffy – Assoc. Director, PIVOT