Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to Streamline Medical Clinical Research Approvals with Webridge Compliance Extranet.

Business Editors/Health, Medical & High-Tech Writers

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 2003

Institutional Review Board (IRB) Seeks

to Put Human Subjects Protection Information

On-Line with Applications and Approval Processes

Webridge, Inc., a leader in configurable web-based compliance systems, today announced that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, one of the largest non-profit academic medical centers in the Western United States, will use Webridge Compliance Extranet for a new electronic submissions system to manage oversight processes for research projects involving human subjects. This Cedars-Sinai initiative is targeted to improve system-wide compliance with regulations and ethical principles governing the conduct of human subject research through improved coordination between multiple institutional research review and oversight entities.

Vast Quantities of Information Drive Automation Need

As research study volumes have risen at Cedars-Sinai, so, too, have federal requirements for gathering information necessary to ensure compliance processes are operating within guidelines. The result has been an explosion in administrative work for IRB staff members forced to collect and manage rapidly increasing amounts of regulatory information. "In our continuing quest to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects at Cedars-Sinai, we have embarked on this new project initiative. The challenge is multi-dimensional," said Shlomo Melmed, MD, Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs. "Our IRB has new applications for research, re-reviews of research that has already been approved, random audits, and continuing certification of research professionals to track. What's more, as good as our oversight processes are, they'll continue to change -- we need a platform that can deal with such changing complexity." Webridge Compliance Extranet will provide Cedars-Sinai with reconfigurable processes for research submissions over the web, including new applications, automated continuing reviews, adverse event reporting and requests to modify research studies that are already underway.

Raising Staff Activity to Higher Levels of Value

As researchers begin entering data directly over the web, Compliance Extranet will free up IRB staff from manually checking files for completed paperwork: Webridge's SmartForms(TM) system automatically guides users to respond to all applicable questions based upon the user's answers to some basic questions about the nature of the research. Additionally, all IRB forms will contain a significant amount of information in help text format and through links to regulatory references. The potential result, according to Eifaang Li, Director of Research Compliance, "is to enhance the quality and efficiency of the overall IRB review and approval process."

About Webridge

Webridge is the world leader in configurable extranet portal software at innovative institutions such Johns Hopkins University, the University of Washington, and Washington University Medical Center as well as at leading companies such as Honeywell, NCR, NEC and HSBC. When organizations need flexible automation for confidential review and approval flows deployed on the Internet, Webridge extranets deliver 24x7. Easy task tracking, re-configurable process flows, built-in auditing, document management, event-driven information alerts, and legacy system integration are all part of Webridge Extranet. Based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, Webridge products configure today's business processes for the challenges of tomorrow. For more information, go to www.webridge.com.

About Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is one of the largest non-profit academic medical centers in the Western United States. For the fifth straight two-year period, Cedars-Sinai has been named Southern California's gold standard in health care in an independent survey. Cedars-Sinai is internationally renowned for its diagnostic and treatment capabilities and its broad spectrum of programs and services, as well as breakthrough in biomedical research and superlative medical education. Named one of the 100 "Most Wired" hospitals in health care, the Medical Center ranks among the top 10 non-university hospitals in the nation for its research activities.