A regulated product that was not going to ship, shipped.
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A clinical-research software start-up
A clinical-research software start-up had a part-built platform, no engineering environment its own team could ship from, and a launch that was not going to happen on the path it was on. We worked with the founders: first a development environment, with repositories, environments, continuous integration, review gates and a release discipline, then completion of the platform, then delivery to launch alongside their team. The product is live and in market, and the environment it ships from belongs to the company rather than to us.
Where it was
The company had built part of a product and could not get it out. The platform existed in pieces, there was no engineering environment that could carry a change from somebody's branch to a release anyone would trust, and on the path it was on it was not going to launch.
That is a common shape and it is rarely a shortage of code. What is missing is the ordinary machinery a regulated product needs before a release can be a routine event: somewhere for the work to live, environments to run it in, checks that run on every change, and a repeatable way to put a version in front of users. Without it, every release is an act of nerve, and a team that is nervous about releasing stops releasing.
What we put in place
In this order, because none of the later pieces is safe without the first one.
- A development environment
- Repositories, environments, continuous integration and review gates, so a change is written, reviewed, tested and promoted the same way every time. Built for the founders' own team to work in rather than for us to operate on their behalf.
- Release discipline
- How a version is cut, what has to pass before it moves, and what happens when something fails: defined, and in use. Discipline that holds only while the supplier is in the building is not discipline.
- Completion of the platform
- With a path to release in place, the remaining modules were built out and taken to a state that could ship rather than to a state that could be demonstrated.
- Delivery to launch
- We took the platform to launch with the founders rather than handing over a repository and a document. A first release is where everything the process missed turns up, so it is the release worth being in the room for.
Why it matters in regulated research
Clinical research software is not judged only on whether it works. It is judged on the record it leaves behind: who did what, under whose delegated authority, against which version of which document, and whether all of that can be produced on request.
The platform holds those systems on one inspection-ready record rather than in separate products that have to be reconciled afterwards: trial management (CTMS), the electronic trial master file (eTMF), the investigator site file and the pharmacy site file (eISF and ePSF), quality management (eQMS), corrective and preventive actions (CAPA), and digital delegation of authority. It is built for NHS and hospital R&D, academic research, contract research organisations and mid-market sponsors, and its documentation is aligned to MHRA, FDA and EU Annex 11 expectations.
That is the product's own public description of what it is for, and this page repeats it at that level.
What the founders are left with
The product is live and in market. A launch that was not going to happen on the previous path happened on this one, and it happened in a way the company can repeat.
What stays behind counts as much as what shipped. The development environment is theirs and their own team runs it, the release discipline is theirs and in use, and the next release goes out through the same path that shipped this one. That is the measure we apply to every engagement on these pages: not what runs while we are there, but what the client can maintain, change and build on once we have gone.
Development environment · Continuous integration · Review gates · Release management · CTMS · eTMF · eQMS and CAPA · Regulated documentation
Related
Written at a public-safe level: client names, internal project names and proprietary business logic are held back by agreement.
Last reviewed