Logan Health Enhances IRB Submissions and Reviews with Human Ethics

Challenge

Logan Health, formerly the Kalispell Regional Healthcare System, is a non-profit research and medical center serving Northern Montana. Its research departments include cancer, endocrinology, and rheumatology, with around 35 active studies in progress at the time of writing.

While Logan Health is a smaller organization, its recent merger with Montana’s Billings Clinic—another non-profit health care and research organization in Montana—presented an excellent opportunity for growth and research expansion. According to Logan Health administrators, the merge could represent a doubling of the total number of active studies, as well as a potential increase in the scope of projects.

Logan Health’s Institutional Review Board and administrators previously relied on IRB Manager to coordinate reviews and approvals, but users found the system unintuitive and at times out-of-date with expected features. With the move from the Kalispell Regional Healthcare System to Logan Health underway in 2019, leadership saw an opening to replace IRB Manager with a more modern and approachable administrative solution.

Solution

After searching for new software to help reduce errors and turnaround times and bridge the gap between researchers and IRB offices, leadership decided to adopt Cayuse Human Ethics due to its ease of use and configurability. With major changes to the organization on the horizon, including the hiring of new IRB staff and addition of several smaller hospitals, administrators and researchers saw Human Ethics as an excellent option to help provide stability and keep projects on track without significant interruptions.

Logan Health’s current IRB Coordinator and Contract Management Specialist Rayna Potkonjak started her current role at the organization only five months after Cayuse Human Ethics was implemented, but the software helped ensure a smooth transition to her new role. “I didn’t experience much disruption,” she recalls of the experience, adding that, “the board and research team also seemed to handle it very nicely.”

The Cayuse Community—an online network of research professionals and product experts available to all Cayuse users—was also a great resource to get Rayna up to speed with minimal training. “That community really helped me just getting answers to my own questions,” she said, “[and] seeing other questions that people bring up is very helpful overall.”

Results

Cayuse Human Ethics has proved indispensable for Rayna, researchers, and other IRB staff. To start, the ease of use has been helpful for new hires and provided stability during times of change. According to Rayna, “it was very easy to learn the software overall… easy to navigate,” and “very easy to teach new users how to use.”

Human Ethics has also made the IRB process much smoother for users, from getting studies submitted by researchers to distributing them to reviewers and receiving approvals or feedback. The solution’s configurable forms with branching logic ensure that researchers only need to answer the questions their submissions truly require for approval, improving turnaround times and decreasing administrative burden. When processes or requirements change, Rayna can easily update the forms in Human Ethics to keep studies moving without pause. 

As Logan Health continues to expand, leaders satisfied with the Cayuse Human Ethics experience are also considering expanding the organization’s Cayuse Research Suite to meet the growing demand for research projects, with Fund Manager in consideration to assist with budgets and increasing research funding. 

For now, Rayna is happy with the continued support Cayuse staff provide whenever questions arise and Human Ethics’ continued updates to keep the solution on track with current research administration trends and necessary features. “It’s always nice to see the new up-and-coming features,” she commented, adding, “It’s good to see [Cayuse] is open to implementing ideas and suggestions from the actual users.”