Lots of kakapo are having lots of kakapo sex

The kākāpō is one of the world's rarest birds, there are only 147 alive today.  kākāpō don't breed very often and this year they are expected to breed in record numbers.

To help with the kakapo program we have adopted Nora.

You can read more about Nora on our blog »

Happy New Year

See our holiday contact page for how to get in touch

A big thank you for an awesome 2018!

Thank you for all your support and feedback this year. Your projects are the reason we come to work each day!

Enjoy this time with your friends and loved ones. 
The Spiral team wish you a safe and happy holiday period, 
Nga kirihimete,god Jul, Merry Christmas

BTW Spinnaker was used to randomise over 2,773 patients.  ... read more on our blog »

Congratulations PLUS

ANZICS Winter Forum from a Lead Developer’s perspective

Lead Developer, Cain Harland, joined Spiral many years ago and has been part of every web-based development the company has ever undertaken.
In 2011, Spiral founded Spinnaker Software and that same year Cain took part in his first clinical trial project, The Heat Trial. He has continued as lead developer for all Spinnaker trials since.
This year Cain had the opportunity to attend the ANZICS Winter Forum in Sydney. A quick trip across the Tasman with his wife was an extra bonus for Cain and the first time he had met many of the people that he works with on a daily basis.

In Cain’s words:
“I know them all well, I talk to them on the phone, get their enquiry tickets and emails and that works very well but it’s so great to actually meet them and put names to faces ... read more on our blog »

Manage your emails from Spinnaker

Did you know you have control over which emails you receive from Spinnaker!

Email notifications are a good thing because they let you know something has happened, like a patient randomised, or they help you remember to follow-up with a patient. But maybe you don't want to receive some notifications ...

head on over to our latest tip to find out how you can manage your emails »

Spiral is running the ANZICS Winter Forum iPad competition again!

The prize of a brand new, 32Gb iPad which will be presented on Tuesday the 28th of August immediately prior to morning tea. This is the NEW iPad that supports Apple Pencil!

Here's what we want you to do:

• between now and 8am on the 28th of August post a photo on Twitter
• include the hashtags #ctgWRF2018 and #spinnakersoftware
• follow the Twitter rules with your posts
• make your photos relevant to the Winter Forum
• you can be as creative or trad. as you like
• be in the room to collect your prize, or deputise someone to do it for you (we are not posting the prize)

Here's what we DON'T want you to do:

• create multiple accounts
• repeat your tweet or post duplicates

Here's what we will do:

• the judge (a talented amateur photographer) will look at all the tweets containing a photo that have BOTH hashtags #ctgWRF2018 and #spinnakersoftware
• the judge will decide which photo, relevant to the forum, he likes best
• the judge, alone, will decide on the winner
• our CEO will present the prize at the Winter Research Forum just prior to morning tea

BTW the judge's decision is final.

Good luck! We'll see you in Sydney!

ICU-ROX 1,000 patients enrolled

ICU-ROX has reached its target of 1,000 patients enrolled which means congratulations, not just to Paul Young and Di Mackle, who lead the teams but to each and every person involved. From the patients, to the clinicians, to the research coordinators to the project management team – it’s a pleasure to work with people, like you, who take positive action to change the future!

Congratulations to you all.

What happens when you ask for a change to Spinnaker

So you have found something in your study that needs to change. Heres a small insight into what we do when you ask for a change.

It could be that something in your CRF has changed, you have found a better way to do something or maybe something in Spinnaker is annoying you. Whatever it is, the path is the same and for the purpose of this example lets assume it’s a reasonable request and the change will be applied.

The change may begin with a Research Coordinator in a hospital who contacts the Project Manager with a suggested change.

The Project Manager passes reasonable requests on to us here at Spiral where the change goes through 3 phases …  development, staging/testing, and production. We have an environment for each of these.

Development

New requests for changes are scheduled and assigned to one of our developers. They make their changes and create a new version of Spinnaker for your project. They test the changes work before the next phase …

Staging

Once the changes have been made one of our team checks and tests a few things around the change including testing that:

• the changes made match the request
• the new functionality actually works
• Spinnaker is stable and continues to work as expected

Every project has a staging site which has a combination of the latest Spinnaker code on it and a copy of your study database. We have a whole server dedicated to our staging sites. If anything goes wrong here it’s not going to affect your study!
Then onto the next phase…

Production

When testing on the staging site is completed we schedule a release date. We time the release for a quiet time of day when there are few or no people signed in to your study. During the release we:

• check there is no-one adding or editing a form
• compare the database structure between the production and staging environments
• copy any database changes to the production environment. Only the database structure is copied, not any data.
• copy the new code to the production environment
• check Spinnaker is stable
• tell your project manager about the release

That’s it in a nutshell …. except of course we keep doing this in a continuous cycle because that’s Devops and Agile development!

Past and Future choices

Have you made any New Year resolutions? It’s that time of year when many of us wonder about the fresh new year where we get a chance to begin again, to set new goals and make new choices.

Perhaps you looked back at 2017.  For us, 2017 was our biggest year yet with 11 trials on our books and over 5,200 patients randomised during the year using Spinnaker.

At Spiral we have already made a few choices about what we are doing in 2018, they are:

• adding another server to our flotilla taking our total servers to 6. Five of which will be in Australia where most of our business now comes from
• aligning all our security practices with the ISO27001 standard
• completing 2 projects which are racing towards final delivery in March/April
  • One of these projects is a collaboration between Australia and Sweden,  two trials TAME and TTM2. I’ll write about that collaboration later in the year meanwhile you can read about these trials on our Spinnaker website.   TTM2 Trial »   TAME Trial »
  • The other (REMAP-CAP) is in the final stages of development and is big news for future health both in terms of trial design (it uses our response adaptive randomisation module) and in it being the largest study on severe CAP ever conducted … read more about REMAP-CAP »

With every opportunity presented we have a choice about how we look at it, how we plan and how we act; each new year is a new opportunity.  These are the choices I want to make this year:

• to be curious, to challenge the status quo. This is how we improve Spinnaker and why we are always working on it.
• to be kind. Even in business, kindness is the foundation to good work, not just in our relationships - we try to make our software kind i.e make it easier for you to use!
• to participate. Sometimes the easy option is to do nothing, to participate is to care enough to be part of something.

Best of luck with your choices, following through on them and in gaining some exciting results in 2018.

Merry Xmas

Merry Xmas to everyone using Spinnaker  

 

During the year you randomised patients, published results and initiated new research. 2017 is our biggest year yet with 11 trials on our books. 2017 highlights include:

• over 5,200 patients were randomised this year using Spinnaker
• TARGET(Monash) and NovelSTART(MRINZ) completed enrolments 
• Bryn Gilbertson joined the team to manage TTM2 and TAME
• we added 2 new servers to our flotilla. We named them Platypus and Discovery (yes there is a new Star Trek series out)

Spiral continues to grow because of what you do. Your projects are the reason we come to work each day and the success of your projects is our most important goal. Thanks for being on board and using our software.

 

We are having a break over summer but be sure that OUR SUPPORT FOR YOU NEVER STOPS. 

While you are playing cricket on the beach or eating too much ham, our infrastructure team will be monitoring Spinnaker, making sure everything is running smoothly and that your trials can be accessed when you need them.

 

All the best for the New Year!

O TARGET

Enrolment completed this week!

What a phenomenal achievement from everyone involved in TARGET.  Congratulations because in just 18 months 46 intensive care units in Australia and New Zealand enrolled 4,000 patients.

That's an average of 7.5 patients a day!  

The busiest day was the 4th of August when 25 patients were enrolled. Crazy!

And it wasn’t just enrolling patients and following up … there were so many bags of treatment to reconcile! … and so many large boxes to manage! 

 Congratulations to you all.

We layered up our Firewall in the fight against cyber hacking

There has been a firewall protecting our clinical trial servers (and your data) ever since we put our first project in “the cloud” in 2013. In the past 5 years we have had no incidents but in our striving for excellence we have gone one step further and added another layer of protection.  

In line with increasing threats and the availability of better protection, we have enhanced our firewall protection with additional layers for DDoS Mitigation, Virtual Patching, and prevention of Zero-Day Exploits. The additional firewall adds an extra level of armour to our servers (yes its a war out there!), will help protect your data and reduces the risk of downtime.  

 

How will the firewall do all that?

In a nutshell; all traffic for our #1 server is routed through this firewall where suspicious traffic is trashed before legitimate traffic is passed on to #1 server.  In more detail it will: 

• Block hack attempts. The firewall filters traffic and blocks malicious traffic and attacks
• Stop brute force attacks. Every application in the cloud gets hit with automated hacker tools known as brute force attacks. If login credentials, for your study, are guessed through one of these attacks hackers can gain access to the application. Our new firewall stops these attacks early.
• Mitigate DDoS attacks. Distributed Denial of Service attacks can cause downtime for applications. These type of attacks, where multiple computers and multiple internet connections are used to flood the bandwidth on a server, are a nuisance because they prevent legitimate users logging in.
• Prevent Zero Day Exploits. New vulnerabilities are being discovered by hackers every day. By partnering with firewall experts who have systems to intelligently stop suspicious behaviour we can stop these exploits even if there is no patch.

On with the battle to keep your data safe!

TARGET Case Study Published

As the TARGET Trial races towards the successful enrolment of its 4,000 patients, we are pleased to publish a case study of our involvement in the project.

TARGET involves 46 ICU's in both New Zealand and Australia. The trial commenced in 2016, it has been recruiting at extremely high rates. Enrolments will be completed early, certainly by the end of 2017.

 With over 100,000 bags of study treatment supplied as part of this trial, some smart stock management was needed. Spinnaker delivered on that. We are very pleased we have been able to help with streamlining the inventory management, delivery, reconciliation and patient allocation right into the CRF. Hopefully making your job easier.

You can read the full case study on our trial summary page over on the Spinnaker website.   You will also find a PDF of the case study, PDF of the TARGET Fact Sheet and a link to an interview with the Chief Investigator answering questions about the trial.

Plus has started enrolments

Time to celebrate as the PLUS Trial has begun taking enrolments. 

For the team at The George Institute and us here at Spiral it’s a major milestone. Enrolments mean the completion of the development stage and advancement towards the target of enrolling 8,800 patients. 

Enrolments also mean the first shipments of study treatment have been delivered. The ordering process, the receipt of shipments at each hospital and then resupply are all handled via our software, Spinnaker.

To reach this point we do a lot of testing of the software and the database used in the trial.  Bryn was kept busy for weeks checking that Spinnaker matched what was requested, after which the team at The George Institute got stuck in and tested the clinical side of things. Enrolment time for us is about making sure everything is ready including:

• setting up the monitoring
• cleaning up the database 
• making sure we are available for technical support on go-live day
• copying the project to a development server so we are ready for any upcoming changes or issues

Once the project is “live” and enrolling patients, our work is not finished, we:

• continue to monitor the response speed and activity on the project
• monitor for teething problems
• do extra testing to double check everything is running smoothly
• monitor and manage the servers that host the study software and database

We also have some clever automations that run in the background and make sure things are ticking along with the trial. 

We do this for each project and PLUS was no exception. 

Congratulations to the PLUS team at The George Institute and to all the sites participating in the early enrolments. Today, 25 patients are enrolled with only 8,775 to go!

Congratulations to the winner of the Spiral iPad in Queenstown

We were at the ANZICS-CTG Winter Research Forum in Queenstown last week. It was the most fun I’ve ever had at a conference. I especially enjoyed being able to give away an iPad to the best “conference” photo on twitter.

Congratulations to Samantha Bates for her fabulous photo of The Remarkables reflected in her car mirror and the clever caption that went along with it.

The forum provided 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. 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 was a great opportunity for me to learn more about these and other projects; to extend my knowledge of whats it like in the world of ICU research so I can take that back to the software and improve Spinnaker for the people using it.

The winner along with two of our favourites

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.