Key Features
InfoEd offers many unique advantages from a technical, functional and business perspective. The full service company, founded in 1991, is exclusively focused on providing software solutions for research compliance and administration. With a full time staff of over 120 employees, InfoEd can apply unparalleled energy into evolving industry requirements and continuous product improvement. With over six hundred software licenses already sold worldwide InfoEd has achieved a critical mass that now drives its continued growth. Below is a short list of key features that differentiate InfoEd and have helped establish the company’s market leading position.
Baselined Code: InfoEd’s baselined code offers a universal model for supporting the complex requirements of research offices worldwide. Instead of pursuing ad hoc customization projects, InfoEd focuses on translating the collective wisdom of its customers into product improvements that benefit all. By maintaining the baseline InfoEd ensures that all customers advance together with the product line so everyone can keep in step with constantly evolving government regulations, industry requirements, and information technology. The baseline approach invites mutually agreeable solutions for common challenges, reinforcing the collaborative nature of the research community itself.
Configurations: While InfoEd’s expert systems support the specialized requirements of research offices worldwide they also include the built-in flexibility necessary to accommodate each customer’s unique requirements. System setups are non-technical in nature. They are designed to be managed by experienced administrators familiar with office policies. No software coding knowledge is required. This ensures the appropriate implementation of the software and provides operational flexibility on an ongoing basis.
Linked Objects: InfoEd’s relational database enables linkages between InfoEd records, so users can readily track associated components. Grants and contracts can be linked to protocols, protocols can be linked to clinical trials, and disclosures can be linked to grants and contracts, and so on in nearly infinite combinations. The InfoEd Relationship Manager provides a graphical view of a record’s associations, including the status and high-level details of each item. The items are also hyper-linked so users with the appropriate permissions can conveniently navigate between related objects. The links empower integrated project management, and facilitate unprecedented coordination across research offices.
Workflow: InfoEd includes a configurable workflow utility that makes it possible for research offices to automate their administrative processes. Workflow design within InfoEd is non-technical; a designated staff member can readily chart the path records will take from concept to closeout. Once established records move systematically through the steps to either individuals or groups, by name or role, based on the process defined. Once configured InfoEd workflow maps provides a bird’s eye view of where all records are in the process, providing unparalleled operational transparency.
eForms: InfoEd eForms Builder provide research offices with an easy to use design tool for creating interactive online institutional forms (e.g. protocol applications; case report forms; proposal cover sheets; etc). While eForms can be modeled on existing documents, InfoEd includes a wide variety of advanced features that ensure both improved submission quality and researcher experience. eForms respond intelligently to researcher inputs, expanding or collapsing to reveal only those fields/sections/pages, which are relevant to each study, eliminating unnecessary paperwork and validating administrative completeness on-the-fly. The robust eForm technology also provides for inline help, field level reporting, version control and change history as part of a comprehensive solution for managing official submissions.
Reporting/Alerts: InfoEd includes an intuitive ad hoc reporting tool with all of its modules. The reporting tool provides access to all system fields including any fields added by the organization, but is filtered automatically based on each user’s security permissions. InfoEd’s smart reporting allows an organization to distribute the capabilities widely, to include researchers themselves, so all system users can access person-appropriate data on demand. Individuals can configure their own basic or advanced queries and see the results in their own customized layouts. Reports can be ad hoc one-off inquiries, or they can be saved for re-use. Reports can also be scheduled to run automatically on a pre-defined day and time. Central administrators can create Global Reports that are available to all users, but return filtered subsets for each person based on their security. In addition, InfoEd also supports ODBC conventions so designated staff can export data as necessary for formatting or advanced statistical analysis.
nTier Security: InfoEd’s application level security supports complex operational requirements, while maintaining ease of use. People tables are maintained centrally, but security rights are granted on a per product basis. Each module can define unlimited roles. Role security can be filtered by organizational unit, which effectively partitions the database (e.g. a research administrator in Engineering might only be able to access Engineering records). Role security can vary with record status (e.g. a researcher might have view/edit/delete rights when a record’s status such as “in development”, but view only access for a record that is “under review”). Roles can even be used to restrict the sections and fields of a record a user may access. Individuals can have multiple roles with a single login that can be validated by institutional authentication. Though the controls are extensive, and security can be tailored per person, roles are typically standardized around a limited number of defaults.
Document Management: InfoEd’s Document Management enables comprehensive record keeping of all science documents, letters of intent, technical reports, non-disclosure agreements, contracts, etc in a single central repository. Virtually any file type can be uploaded and linked to a relevant publication, proposal, protocol, trial, or disclosure. Attachments are stored in the database and are retrievable with InfoEd’s Reporting Tool. Text based documents (e.g. .doc, .txt, .rtf, .pdf) are fully text searchable from within the system. All documents are time/date stamped upon load for version control and audit purposes.
Integration: InfoEd offers an Enterprise and a Financial Staging Area to facilitate import/export between InfoEd and 3rd party institutional systems. The Staging Areas flatten the complex InfoEd data model enabling the system owners at customer sites a great degree of self-help in establishing and maintaining the interfaces. The Enterprise Staging Area (ESA) supports the exchange of core institutional data specific to the InfoEd people, organizational unit and sponsor tables. It also enables integration with institutional Authentication systems (e.g. LDAP; Kerberos; Active Directory; SAML; etc.). The Financial Staging Areas (FSA) supports the establishment of accounts and the management of account balances. Transactions can be fed from an institutional system to InfoEd via the FSA. Both Staging Areas are covered by InfoEd's support and are updated along with the modules to ensure interface stability.
Professional Services: InfoEd is a full-service solution provider. The company compliments its product offering with comprehensive services that include pre-implementation planning, project management, and ongoing customer support. InfoEd recognizes that even the largest institutions can be stretched thin with internal initiatives that consume precious resources. InfoEd’s consulting group can provide qualified and cost-effective assistance, to keep projects moving ahead. The group is staffed with research veterans and experienced consultants. With first-hand product knowledge and privileged access to InfoEd’s technical resources, InfoEd’s consulting group is uniquely positioned to accelerate deployments and mitigate project risk.