Modern software development in the fight against cancer
Zurich (pts015/11.04.2013/12:00) – The Swiss Association for Clinical Cancer Research (SAKK) conducts studies at all major hospitals in Switzerland and abroad as an academic, decentralized research institute, based on a performance agreement with the federal government. SAKK is a non-profit organization that investigates the efficacy and tolerability of new therapies in oncology and further develops existing cancer treatments. The aim is to determine the best possible treatment for cancer in adults. For this purpose, the SAKK as a cooperative group has been conducting multicentre clinical studies independent of industry since 1965. Members of the consortium are cancer treatment centers, whose representatives, supported by the coordination center in Bern, work out and carry out interdisciplinary studies in the most common types of cancer.
Through its pioneering role, SAKK and its network are the primary contacts for questions about clinical cancer research for authorities, associations and pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland. Research is not shaped by commercial interests. The SAKK is committed to the public interest and its members to a cost-efficient and orderly work.
In order to carry out the studies on the IT side, SAKK has itself developed the Patras and Sinatras applications and the necessary databases and has thus been able to precisely evaluate the results of the clinical cancer studies. These applications have been in operation for several years and the people who programmed them in Delphi are no longer in the company. Therefore, they went on the search for a reliable partner who can carry out the support and maintenance, as well as the necessary error correction or functional adaptation to changed study procedures or legalistic requirements, without having to hire their own programmer.
Peter Durrer, Quality Assurance, SAKK: Medical-clinical cancer research means studies on patients in treatment and therapy, which sometimes span very long periods of time, that goes up to several decades. Patient data is constantly collected at regular intervals and entered into the databases. This is why it is important to operate these databases over this long period of time and it became necessary for us to find a partner who can support us optimally. Because these applications and the underlying databases were written in a programming language that hardly anyone knows today, in Delphi.
Peter Durrer: „It was important to us to have a partner who can also provide support and who can make case-related adjustments and extensions of the applications or in the database area in a short way.“ We looked at some eligible companies and made the good decision to work with TechTalk in the end. With TechTalk, we have a stable partner who will ensure over the next few years that someone fixes our problems in a short response time.
Andreas Rosenthal, founder and CEO of TechTalk: TechTalk has been developing software according to individual needs for 20 years and has brought the process of communication and implementation of such projects to perfection during this time. And this not only at the time of development, but also afterwards, when it comes to keeping the investment in these systems in operation in the long term and efficiently. This experience combined with a cost-efficient nearshoring offer qualifies TechTalk as an application management partner, even for small and medium-sized projects. However, we also offer our customers security in cooperation as an established company.
In ongoing clinical trials, changes and adjustments to the processes are sometimes necessary, which must be registered with the authorities, says Durrer. If their OK comes, TechTalk can implement these changes, which is happening to the fullest satisfaction so far. Especially with changes in the database, deep Delphi knowledge is necessary and the SAKK is very happy at TechTalk who have found experts for it.
Peter Durrer: „TechTalk can quickly make the adjustments to our old applications and their databases resulting from current changes or extensions in clinical trials.“
The natural scientist who supervises the study writes a ticket when a problem arises or a change is necessary, this gets a person in the IT of the SAKK, who „translates“ this ticket for the software engineer at TechTalk into the technical world and transmits it. “As the duration of our collaboration with TechTalk increases, we have less and less work translating our tickets into a technical language, as the software engineers already know our projects and needs very well and quickly know what to do.” Proposals for optimisation were also submitted relatively soon, which we then implemented, which also contributes to increasing the quality of the results of the studies, says Durrer.
Peter Durrer: The great thing about working with TechTalk is that there are now three people who know the project well and can represent each other. So there are no delays in the case of illness or holidays, which is extremely important for us.
The support of Patras and Sinatras has been in the hands of TechTalk Software AG since October 2011 and is mainly carried out by the Development Center in Budapest. The system was transferred to TechTalk’s application management in clearly defined workshops.
Andreas Rosenthal: In order to meet the high security requirements and not only to live the careful handling of the data, but also to make it comprehensible, a uniform and transparent system was introduced for the planning, coordination, testing and delivery of all changes to the system. And the importance of data consistency, security and quality is due to a solid proactive and preventive prevention of errors.
In addition to quality assurance in scientific research, SAKK also sees the transparency of the costs of changes and maintenance, the transparency of schedules, ensured quality through uniform deployment plans, maximum security and care in the handling of the data. Furthermore, SAKK benefits from reducing costs and can now concentrate entirely on its core technical tasks.
Peter Durrer: „From the beginning of 2012, there was a cut, because since that time all seven to twelve new studies that are started each year are implemented, carried out and evaluated in a commercial application.“ However, the lion’s share of the research will have to be done with the old applications for several years, as clinical trials often last for decades. Many studies still recruit patients, and data collection takes much longer than treatment time. If we had continued to maintain and operate the old applications and databases internally, this would have been possible only on a low-cost flame. Thanks to the technically competent partner TechTalk, we can now make all the necessary adjustments and extensions, which also ensures the quality of the studies that are still ongoing in Patras and Sinatras.
(End)
Source: TechTalk Software AG
Contact person: Andreas Rosenthal
Tel: +41 (44) 365 79 39
Email: andreas.rosenthal@techtalk.ch
Website: www.techtalk.ch
[ Quelle: http://www.pressetext.com/news/20130411015 ]