On Sunday evening, millions tuned in to watch the team everyone loves to hate (the New England Patriots, of course) make their ninth Super Bowl appearance in a 1:1 match-up against the Atlanta Falcons. For the first three quarters, it seemed as if the Falcons had “risen” and were on their way to take home…

You have a shiny new eTMF technology with all of the bells and whistles that you and your team thought would only be possible in your dreams!  Finally, TMF documents can be loaded without a second thought to inspection readiness because this new system provides instant access on your computer screen to what is present…

At the 2016 Drug Information Association (DIA) conference in Philadelphia a few weeks ago, Veeva released the third annual Veeva 2016 Paperless TMF Survey. The goal of this 13-question Survey (many of which included sub-questions with response matrices) was to further understand the impact of the electronic TMF (eTMF) adoption on clinical processes and the…

Over the years, I have participated in and managed a number of TMF Quality Control (QC) projects, and it has become one of my favorite activities. It’s one of the reasons I am facilitating the Metrics Champion Consortium (MCC) initiative on the TMF and leading the quality work stream for the TMF Reference Model. One…

Training is a vital component of workplace efficiency especially when it comes to one of the most important deliverables of a clinical trial – the Trial Master File (TMF). Perhaps that’s why, according to a recent article in Forbes magazine, US companies spent over $70 billion on corporate training in 2014, an increase of 15%…

It seems that every time I open my MSNBC app, I read about yet another pharma/biotech merger and acquisition (M&A).  What exactly is an M&A anyway?  Investopedia defines a merger as “a combination of two companies to form a new company, and an acquisition as the purchase of one company by another.” My favorite is…

To build a strong TMF that is not only inspection ready at all times, but also reliable and credible is essential for the reconstruction of the conduct of any clinical trial during an audit or inspection process. The following 5 pillars of TMF success facilitate efficient trial management: 1. Standardized processes: There’s more than one…

This post is unconventional and perhaps a little unpopular, but it has to be said: more than likely, you are writing and filing TOO many NTFs for missing documents, signatures, and data. Enough is enough!   Carl Anderson said it best in his article from March 1, 2008 in Applied Clinical Trials, “The practice has become so ubiquitous that new…

The Trial Master File Reference Model (TMF RM) team conducted the fifth annual TMF RM Survey from May to July 2015. The survey results were published last week and I would like to share with you some very interesting data about current TMF practices. SURVEY BACKGROUND As a sub-committee member of the TMF RM initiative,…