Summary
Objectives:
Our objectives were to analyze the possibility of an exchange of an entire clinical
study between two different and independent study software solutions. The question
addressed was whether a software-independent transfer of study metadata can be performed
without programming efforts and with software routinely used for clinical research.
Methods:
Study metadata was transferred with ODM standard (CDISC). Study software systems
employed were MACRO (InferMed) and XTrial (XClinical). For the Proof of Concept, a
test study was created with MACRO and exported as ODM. For modification and validation
of the ODM export file XML-Spy (Altova) and ODM-Checker (XML4Pharma) were used.
Results:
Through exchange of a complete clinical study between two different study software
solutions, a Proof of Concept of the technical feasibility of a system-independent
metadata exchange was conducted successfully. The interchange of study metadata between
two different systems at different centers was performed with minimal expenditure.
A small number of mistakes had to be corrected in order to generate a syntactically
correct ODM file and a “vendor extension” had to be inserted. After these modifications,
XTrial exhibited the study, including all data fields, correctly. However, the optical
appearance of both CRFs (case report forms) was different.
Conclusions:
ODM can be used as an exchange format for clinical studies between different study
software. Thus, new forms of cooperation through exchange of metadata seem possible,
for example the joint creation of electronic study protocols or CRFs at different
research centers. Although the ODM standard represents a clinical study completely,
it contains no information about the representation of data fields in CRFs.
Keywords
Standardization - clinical trial - medical informatics - metadata - CDISC
