Articles
EDC: Caught in a Trap
By Timothy Pratt, PhD
Originally published in Applied Clinical Trials, June 2007
First-mover Syndrome
Ten years is a multigenerational lifetime in computer technology development. Ten years ago cell phone IM (instant messaging) didn't exist, and a lot of people were using 486 computers and thought they were pretty good. Even the Internet, at least as it relates to widespread adoption, was in its infancy, and most software depended on a single operating system environment and local installation to run.
Early movers in EDC technology simply took existing software designed to be run solely on a desktop PC and "webified" them. This brought with it the attendant baggage of needing some degree of local software installation ("fatclient"), specific operating systems (usually Windows - too bad if you use a Mac or Linux), and specific Internet browsers (that your IT department may not allow, usually because of major security flaws) - all of which runs the risk of making life hard for sites and sponsors alike.
What an older technology vector means in practice to the clinical research professional is profound in the actual conduct of day-to-day work, as well as future scalability and flexibility. Some maintain that advanced technology cannot perform say, honoraria/reimbursement or CDMS functions as well as EDC.4,5 Is it true? Yes - at least for the technology in which they have vested heavily.
Still, others attempt to integrate disparate systems that were designed as stand-alone applications and never intended to "talk" to one another. This often occurs when the company acquires another with some piece of software they want without the R&D burden of having to develop it themselves. Unfortunately, the different pieces of software result in a series of Islands of Automation integrated by bridges (interfaces) that periodically get jammed up with traffic or fall down.6 As some authors maintain, "interfacing islands of automation which have been designed in isolation will always be problematic."7
