QuartzBio’s team has deep experience in technology-enabled solutions for the life science industry. In this blog series, we invited you to get to know a member of the QuartzBio team.

This month, we are delighted to talk with Katie Berola, Director of virtual Sample Inventory Management. After learning about Katie here, please feel free to connect with her on LinkedIn.

1. In your own words, what do you do? 
   I build tools that take a process that is necessary and time-consuming and make it better and faster.
   
   Subjects in clinical trials are volunteers. Some patients consent without knowing if the treatment will help them. Others consent knowing the treatment will likely not help them, but they volunteer anyway. At the end of the trial, the samples and the data are all that is left. Building tools to take all that knowledge gained, even in failure, and make it useful for the future is a part of respecting the patients’ sacrifice. For some patients, that sacrifice can be precious hours in the last weeks and months of their lives.
   
   I am passionate about data quality, making research better, and helping patients have better outcomes.
   
   
2. What is your fondest memory of working at QuartzBio?
   My fondest memory was when I came to this company and realized they encourage innovation and creativity.
   
   The priority to deliver our clients’ expectations is high, but equally high is the expectation to continuously improve and develop our tools. It is inspirational to know that if improvement is possible, I will be encouraged to pursue that improvement even if a different method already exists.
   
   
3. Complete this sentence: QuartzBio is _________ because _________.
   QuartzBio is cutting-edge because we do not stop creating solutions. The team here faces new challenges frequently and strives to solve them.
   
   
4. Complete this sentence:  QuartzBio customers are _________ because _________.
   QuartzBio customers are an opportunity to enhance or expand our tools because there are always new challenges and different needs. Some of the best product features we have developed originated from QuartzBio customers, and those features have then been used to benefit all customers.
   
   
5. What piece of art – book, movie, music, artwork, etc. – inspired you the most and why?
   It was very hard to choose as I am inspired by many things!
   
   My favorite example is the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Taking what is one of the best fantasy stories ever written and blending artistry and technology to bring it to life is truly amazing. It’s a beautiful combination of human creativity and scientific advancement.
   
   
6. What’s the best piece of advice you have ever been given?
   There are ten solutions to every problem. The first solution, while functional, may not be elegant. It is our responsibility to keep working to find the other nine solutions to achieve both functionality and elegance.

The challenge: Maintaining clinical trial timelines dependent on vendor performance

A global biotechnology company with seven clinical-phase programs approached QuartzBio with a challenge shared by many organizations in the industry — overall assessment of clinical trial vendors and sites was time-consuming and unreliable, given global site footprints, complex sample lifecycles, and inconsistent naming across sites and vendors.

Tasked with preparing regular executive summaries, the company’s clinical and biomarker operations teams were spending significant time deriving trial-wide key performance indicators (KPIs), lacking visibility into vendor performance – and challenged to translate current experience into future study planning.

This lack of visibility was exacerbated by the absence of standard nomenclature and inconsistent data entry across vendors. Clinical operations teams were spending time manually mapping and reconciling data and metadata from multiple independent sources.

The QuartzBio approach: Continuously updated visibility through consolidated dashboards

The client implemented the Sample Intelligence solution, powered by the QuartzBio Platform.

Using the platform’s built-in dynamic dashboards (examples shown in Figure 1), augmented by some bespoke reports custom-built by QuartzBio for the client, the clinical operations team was able to easily monitor and report on multiple vendor performance parameters:

• Turnaround times from sample collection to sample processing to test result generation
• Completion rate of samples tested within stability window
• Sample processing quality KPIs by site and vendor
• Rate of missed/incomplete baseline and on treatment collections
• Data discrepancies by site and vendor
• Protocol violations by site and vendor
• Consent violations by site and vendor

Core to QuartzBio’s approach is rigorous sample data integration. The Sample Intelligence solution automatically harmonizes sample information from multiple sites, vendors, and other sources, regardless of format or nomenclature. QuartzBio applies an adaptive data dictionary that learns and updates common nomenclatures over time, creating a flexible model. Using this model, it harmonizes the non-standard nomenclature across vendors and studies, enabling clear visibility and eliminating manual processes.

The outcome: Fast, accurate reports, timely decisions, course correction on-study

Empowered by 24/7 access to vendor performance, visibility into expected sample schedules, and full reconciliation oversight, the client’s clinical operations teams started using the solution for generating visualizations to guide executives and inform investors.

These visualizations enabled the client to take action at specific sites and vendors that were underperforming. Armed with more reliable trends in sample schedules and turnaround times, the biomarker operations team could more accurately project data delivery timelines and anticipate when key decisions could be made.

Sign up for our webinar, “Taming Clinical Sample Chaos,” to learn about the latest reporting capabilities available to users of Sample Intelligence solution.