Introducing our new Project Manager

Meet our new Project Manager, Bryn Gilbertson. He has been working as a tester for us, testing on the PLUS Trial, and earlier this month accepted the role of Project Manager.

The role had been mapped out and loaded on our website ready to advertise as soon as we received confirmation of our next project. I knew our next project would tip us into securing an extra person to join our team. That project turned out to be the TTM2 and TAME Trials combined (more about that later).

Bryn adapted quickly to our way of working, our customer focus and the matrix of software we use. He has a neuroscience degree; the TTM2 & TAME Trials are looking at neurological outcomes after people have experienced a cardiac arrest and Bryn has been enjoying reading the protocols for both these trials while he gets up to speed on the project.

Read more about Bryn »

See you in Queenstown 23rd-25th August

Spiral is going to the ANZICS-CTG Winter Research Forum in Queenstown. The forum provides an informal opportunity for investigators to gain early advice and feedback on research proposals, to explore issues relevant to study design and conduct in ANZ ICUs and to foster a collaborative approach to study development within the CTG.

We are very pleased and excited to support the ANZICS-CTG community and to attend the forum where we expect to learn more about the trials undertaken by the CTG.

Five of the trials listed on the program are, or will be, using our software; these are TTM2, TAME, TARGET, PLUS and REMAP-CAP. This presents a great opportunity for us to learn more about these and other projects, to gain further insights into the world of ICU research and catch up with everyone that we work with.

Look out for the competition - we will be giving away an iPad for the most relevant photo on Twitter. Details to follow later.

Forum website »

TASI Trial launched this week

This week we launched another study – the TASI Study.

This is a small, low budget pilot trial that will test the potential overall benefit of the TightRope versus syndesmotic screw fixation for ankle injuries. You can read more about it on the Spinnaker website »

The trial has been running for over 12 months using the classic envelope system for randomisation. Patients were previously randomised into this multi-centre trial by telephoning a central coordinator. This placed a significant burden on the coordinator to always be available by mobile phone. In one easily implemented package our randomisation module has removed all that difficulty and put randomising patients in the hands of the local registrars.

With only 160 patients in the pilot there was not the budget for our full Spinnaker package. Our stand alone Randomisation Module is useful and surprisingly affordable package for pilot studies like the TASI Trial.

Your database on steroids

In the space of a week our sys ops have upgraded our clinical trial server in Sydney (Wombat) and added another server to cope with the growth in Spiral and the popularity of our Spinnaker Software.

The server upgrade means Spinnaker just got a whole lot quicker and access to your database is faster. We doubled the random access memory (RAM) on Wombat and added another processor. Monitoring of the server should show some significant gains in speed but already we can see a huge difference in the response time … and you will to.

The new server (Platypus) is also in Sydney but at another location to give us more flexibility about where we place your database. Platypus has the PLUS Trial on it, ready to enrol 8,800 patients in what must be one of the biggest ICU trials in Australasia.

Platypus is part of a long term plan to provide a smarter service and a more agile response. Under consideration is how we respond to server overloads, how quickly and smoothly can we move a single study instance of Spinnaker from one server to another and maintain 100% data integrity. Another consideration is alternative options for key functions, like randomisation and unblinding, during unavoidable downtime.

At Spiral we are all committed to providing a fast, agile response from the database and from our support team to you.
Hope you enjoy the ride with Spinnaker, on your faster database.