Increasing
the quality of research is crucial to enhancing its impact, while
simultaneously eliminating unnecessary waste, redundancy, and duplication. In
line with our goals of supporting the successful development of new therapies
and improving existing treatments, we established eight topic-based platforms in 2017.
SCTO Platforms serve as pools of expertise: each
platform consists of a team with expertise, skills, and knowledge related to
one key field of clinical research. Because SCTO Platforms are interconnected,
they facilitate networking within the SCTO’s CTU Network and act as incubators of innovation. Their members aim to not only provide
leadership and share resources but also inspire one another, revitalise their
fields, and keep apace with the latest trends and best practices.
Support for national and international
stakeholders
Our
platforms strive to assist the following national and international
stakeholders in a variety of ways:
- competent
authorities and ethics committees by promoting (inter)national harmonisation
and the simplification of processes
- clinical
researchers, sponsors, and their teams (from industry and academia) by setting
national standards, making recommendations (e.g. facilitating multicentre
studies), ensuring international compatibility, and promoting skills training
and maintenance
- other
partners by serving as an information hub
- patients
by supporting patient empowerment and fostering the active involvement of
patients and the public in academic clinical research (PPI).
SCTO Platforms provide a variety of benefits to clinical research, including:
- increased
and accelerated harmonisation and cooperation nationwide through the exchange
and dissemination of know-how
- useful recommendations
and relevant resources, including practical tools
- clear national points of contact for specific topics
- greater
exchange and alignment with the European and the international research
communities.
During the 2017–2020 funding period, SCTO Platforms
developed a variety of ready-to-use tools:
- free online safety training for clinical study staff to consolidate or refresh their knowledge about patient safety and reporting considerations in clinical research, developed by the Education and Safety platforms;
- a framework of clinical research core competencies (CRCC) that investigators and sponsor-investigators should acquire throughout their career, developed by the Education Platform;
- a web portal named Clinical Research Careers that provides the following: centralised information on the various career paths physicians can follow, overviews or filtrable databases on career support and funding instruments, postgraduate training opportunities, mentoring programmes, and a clinical research core competencies (CRCC) framework, developed by the Education Platform and co-funded by the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, unimedsuisse, and the SCTO;
- an online resource tool for clinical research management named Easy Guide to Clinical Studies (Easy GCS) that provides short and straightforward information on all aspects of managing clinical studies, from set-up to completion, developed by the Project Management Platform;
- Regulatory Affairs Watch, an online journal that regularly shares news of a scientific and regulatory nature from Switzerland and abroad and aims to reach a wide, national audience of human research professionals, issued by the Regulatory Affairs Platform;
- diverse risk assessment tools and risk-based resources to facilitate improved and more informed decision-making and to better plan available resources, developed by the Auditing and the Monitoring platforms;
- pilot audits at two CTUs with specifically established tools and auditing training opportunities to boost the CTU Network’s auditor pool, conducted by the Auditing Platform;
- templates for monitoring plans and monitoring visit reporting, Guidelines for Risk-Based Monitoring (Risk-Based Monitoring (RBM) Score Calculator and User Instructions), and the fact sheet Central Data Management in Clinical Trials, all developed by the Monitoring Platform;
- unified data processing solutions throughout the CTU Network with the secuTrial® R package published on CRAN, GitHub, and the Anaconda Cloud, developed by the Data Management Platform;
- open-access statistical tools developed by statisticians from the CTU Network as part of an annual competition for a grant to develop statistical codes or programmes, initiated by the Statistics & Methodology Platform;
- guidelines for sharing clinical research data, with particular reference to the national context and applicable laws, developed by the Statistics & Methodology Platform in collaboration with the Data Management Platform;
- an annual safety reporting template and a serious adverse event (SAE) reporting template, developed by the Safety Platform.
More information
Visit www.sctoplatforms.ch to browse through the platforms' tools and resources.
Coordination and networking
The SCTO
Liaison Officers provide a link between the SCTO Executive Office and the
platforms while also supporting them in the implementation of their projects and
the release and publication of their tools.
In order to facilitate networking between themselves and present their
activities and tools to each other, the platforms hold a joint biannual event.