Jill Beckley from the Division of Haematology/Oncology Clinical Trials Support Unit at the Hospital for Sick Children will shares how cancer trials have evolved due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Themes that discussed include best practices for current processes, improving quality and efficiencies, and eliminating silos between research and clinical groups.

Research Ready Advisory Group Member Rosemarie Clarke shares best practices, tips, and practical solutions for decentralized clinical trials. Challenges and learnings on topics including REB, recruitment strategies, and digital integration are discussed.

REDCap is a secure web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. This workshop, led by Geetha Sanmugalingham,  Certified Clinical Research Professional, focused on the how REDCap can be used to design a data capture form specific to your research study and how to effectively take the collected data and present it in a report using it for analysis, quality improvement, audit and in other ways.

Engaging patients in study planning and beyond is considered “best practice” and is even required for some study grants, but where do you start? How and when do you find and “engage” patients? This session was led by Patient Engagement expert Dawn Richards, PhD, the founder of Five02 Labs Inc., and Director of Patient and Public Engagement at Clinical Trials Ontario. In this session you will learn about how working with people who live with conditions will bring different perspectives to your work. You will also be provided with practical guidance on how to start this process and where to find resources to help you with this work. Also shared are some tips on how to establish and facilitate this engagement in our current environment of remote connections.

In this Research Ready Mentor Spotlight we heard from Sarah Best, Clinical Trials Research Manager for the Cognitive Clinical Research Group (CCRG) at Parkwood Institute, on how to assess a clinical trial budget. She helps identify important cost elements to consider for clinical trial budgeting and give you techniques and tools to assess a complete trial budget efficiently and with confidence. Sarah has worked with sites within The Consortium of Canadian Centres for Clinical Cognitive Research (C5R) and shared best practices with you on this call.

COVID-19 has changed the way we monitor trials, maybe forever. The C17 has been utilizing this model for many years in the oversight and quality assurance of trials. In this interactive session, Ellen Morrison and Stephanie Badour will share some best practices for the preparation and execution of a remote monitoring visit. Whether your site has full access EMR, uses redacted documents or video conference platforms, there are ways to improve the efficiency of this monitoring approach that can be easily adopted. Ellen and Stephanie have been working together in the peer-to-peer monitoring program and more recently using remote monitoring, and are going to share their best tips and tricks with you in this session.