Summary

The ClinSpark product team is excited to announce the third and final release of 2023 - version 23.3.

The release contains improvements towards data review workflows and API capabilities. Additionally, there are some security and performance improvements. We feel this release will be of benefit to all of our early phase customers. In this blog post, we will share a few highlights.

Data Review

Through customer feedback and guidance provided by certain EU regulators, we have taken suggestions for implementing stronger controls in support of workflows requiring audit trail reviews. The intention with these new capabilities are to bring information about Item data changes into clearer view to support risk-based reviews and help sites determine if changes against Item data are intentional.

These features are available to users in the Study > Data component. New filters and visual indicators are now present to support these workflows.

Open

A new Status filer called ‘Data Value Changed’ is available.

Open

The ‘strike-through’ (S) icon is listed next to any Item values that have been changed from their original collected value.

The strike-through icon was selected as the visual because it illustrates how a value is changed, in adherence with GCP. These changes further extend on existing Item audit trail views and certain reports as well, such as Data Audits and Annotations. We look forward to gaining feedback from our customers about this new capability.

API Improvements

A number of enhancements were made towards API capabilities. Of particular note are the introduction of API authentication token features now present on user accounts. These features were added to provide a more modern and secure authentication mechanism.

There are new role actions that accompany the use of these features as well.

Customers can still leverage existing basic HTTP authentication mechanism for existing accounts, for the time being.

In a later release, basic authentication may no longer be supported. Customers who use the APIs are encouraged to review these changes and plans to use the more secure token-based methods at some point.

Other notable changes

Some additional enhancements were made to improve various workflows.

In the Study > Lab Data component, users can now view lab specimen comments directly with each panel result set. This allows users to see these comments during review workflows, and not have to navigate to a different area of ClinSpark to review this information.

Within form data collection workflows, ClinSpark now accepts larger files for items configured as ‘file upload’ data types. Attachments up to 100MB can now be accepted.

Within the Medical Coding > Data component, controls have been added to support pagination and improve the page performance. This will make it easier for coders to address a large number of records that require action.

Additionally, an existing feature that was previously exclusive to superadmin users is now available to customers. This feature allows form data to be moved between site, subject, and study event timepoints. Under rare circumstances, it may be necessary to use this capability to correct mistakes in certain collection workflows.

Looking ahead

There are a few other changes in this release detailed in the technical file release notes. The complete technical file is available to registered users of our service desk portal.

https://foundryhealth.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/kb/view/4051173396

We will continue to strive for providing effective solutions through a continuously improving product. As we look ahead to next year, we hope to bring in more exiting changes.

Product improvements are made possible through the ongoing and collaborative feedback we receive from our early phase customers. Listening to feedback and understanding the needs of users is of crucial importance to our development team. We look forward to these opportunities.