How UCLA Health reclaimed
12 hours a week
on a live FDA trial
Automating multi-source clinical data tracking for a drug efficacy study — with zero manual reconciliation and full HIPAA compliance.
12 hours a week spent reconciling data across four platforms — manually
On a live FDA-regulated trial, data completeness isn't just a best practice — it's a compliance requirement. But the process for verifying it was entirely manual. Every week, a research assistant worked through four separate systems to confirm what data had arrived and what was missing:
- Review the team's Outlook calendar to identify which patient appointments had occurred and what data should be expected.
- Open Box and check which therapy recordings, clinical forms, and rating scales had been uploaded.
- Log into Qualtrics and confirm which patient surveys had been completed.
- Cross-reference REDCap to verify clinical data entries were current.
- Reconcile everything against the master Excel tracker, then manually email the team about anything missing.
This process consumed 12 hours of a research assistant's week — time that could have gone toward active research. It also left a gap: if data was missing, the team might not find out until the next manual review cycle, up to seven days later.
A daily automated system that does the reconciliation — and alerts the team instantly
We built a fully automated data collection and validation workflow that runs every day, pulling from all four platforms and updating the master tracker without any human intervention.
- Patient appointment data, Box file uploads, Qualtrics survey responses, and REDCap entries are all pulled and cross-referenced automatically on a daily cadence.
- The master Excel tracker is updated in real time — each data point logged and timestamped, including FDA-required fields that need regular check-in records.
- Any missing or expected-but-not-yet-received data triggers an automatic alert to the team, replacing the manual weekly email entirely.
- Built-in data validation catches inconsistencies and errors that manual review would routinely miss.
HIPAA & Data Security Because the study involves protected health information, the entire system was built using enterprise-grade tools operating within UCLA Health's existing HIPAA-compliant infrastructure. No patient data ever leaves the institution's secure environment.
Faster, cleaner data — and a team freed to focus on the research itself
The system has been live and running every day since deployment. The impact goes beyond time savings — on a regulated trial, data quality and timeliness have direct implications for study integrity.
| Result | What It Means |
|---|---|
| 12 hrs/week reclaimed | A research assistant's time is returned to active work — not administrative reconciliation. |
| 99% fewer data errors | Automated cross-referencing eliminates the mismatches and missed entries that occur in manual tracking across four platforms. |
| Missing data flagged within 24 hrs | The team is alerted the next day — down from a weekly review cycle that could let gaps go unnoticed for up to 7 days. |
| FDA data points logged daily | Timestamped records of every required check-in create a clean, audit-ready trail. |
| Full HIPAA compliance maintained | Built entirely within UCLA Health's enterprise infrastructure. No PHI ever touches an external system. |
[Client testimonial coming soon]
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