Sally Huebner began her career as a registered radiation therapist. In this role, she worked with radiation oncologists and care teams to deliver radiation therapy. The job required collaboration, communication skills and an ability to understand the bigger picture while still paying attention to important details to protect her patients.
Sally put this experience to use when she accepted a role in a medical device company working in product reliability. She was soon drawn to the clinical research side of the business, and in this role, she also became a user of iMednet.
Sally joined the Mednet team seven years ago. As a project manager, her work includes clinical data management, MedDRA coding, project management, study build and design. Sally is also a Society for Clinical Data Management (SCDM) Certified Clinical Data Manager. Every day, she leverages this knowledge and broader experience in healthcare and clinical research to effectively support Mednet customers and their clinical research projects from start to finish.
We recently asked Sally to share some of her experiences and insights.
How does your role impact/improve clinical trials for customers?
As a project manager at Mednet, I guide the client in their study build design. My role allows me to interact with clients and help them plan and build studies, leveraging iMednet’s unique suite of capabilities to optimize study processes and improve efficiency.
What do you see as the most significant challenges your clients are currently facing in clinical trials?
I think the biggest challenge right now is the uncertainty of running a study with the potential of future COVID-19 restrictions looming. It requires research teams to be incredibly flexible as they try to move forward while keeping patients, site staff, and their teams safe.
How are your customers dealing with current COVID-19 restrictions?
These are certainly challenging times. My clients have done a fantastic job of running their studies and meeting timelines. Despite recent hospital and clinic shutdowns, they are moving research forward. It is a testament to their persistence and agility. I am pleased we’ve been able to leverage the flexibility of the Mednet platform to support a variety of critical processes during this time, like remote monitoring.
How do you see the role of technology impacting clinical trials?
I see a future with no manual data entry by the sites. Instead, data would be imported into the electronic case report forms (eCRFs) from the subject’s medical records, core lab data, etc. Also, I envision electronic medical records becoming more uniform in design, making data extraction easier.
How do you think that will impact various study roles and processes?
I see less manual review and travel by the study monitors. Direct data import into CRFs would mean they do not have to be onsite to monitor records supporting a trial. I also envision the study build time decreasing as technologies expand. Even the time required to prepare study documents and data for regulatory submission will shrink as technology and processes improve.
What was your most memorable project while working at Mednet?
One of my customers was running an oncology trial and requested additional study support. Having worked in oncology earlier in my career, I was able to leverage my experience and help them by creating contracts and hiring pathologists to perform independent biomarker reviews. I was also involved in reviewing biostats’ data and abstracts. It was a wonderful feeling to be able to use my past experience to help in such a meaningful way.
How do you believe Mednet can make a difference in clinical trials?
I believe Mednet must stay on our current path of innovation. We are working on product enhancements that will have a significant impact on how quickly our customers can design, build and conduct trials. Right now, we are working on an application programming interface (API) to replace manual data entry with bulk data import. This enhancement could save vast amounts of time and resources and provide much higher quality data. I enjoy being part of a team that can make such a positive impact on clinical research.
Dictionary.com describes success as “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” Sally contributes to Mednet’s success every day. More importantly, she helps our customers – both sponsors and CROs – achieve success every day. Her work allows research teams to quickly and efficiently conduct clinical trials to bring new medicines and treatments to people in need. We cannot think of a better way to demonstrate success!
Read More in our Mednet Minds Series:
Jean Brislance: Clinical Trial Experience Delivers Quality at Mednet