InferMed provides a global hosting service through its strategic alliance partner, NNIT, to offer a secure validated environment in which clients can run MACRO clinical studies. With this service clinical trial sponsors can use MACRO on a trial-by-trial basis and avoid the need for investment in infrastructure and the risks that are inherent with such investment.
The hosted service:
- Provides a secure, validated environment for running clinical studies
- Avoids the need for the sponsor to purchase expensive hardware
- Can be rapidly deployed
- Distributes licence payments across the duration of the study.
- Avoids the need for the client to install or support software
NNIT also hosts InferMed’s Clinical Gateway, the automatic link that bridges MACRO with Oracle Clinical.
The hosting premises
The hosting facilities are provided in a highly secure environment protected against physical intrusion via automatic intrusion detection, burglar alarms, infrared beam curtain, guard patrol units controlling the areas and buildings and video surveillance. The facility control unit monitors and controls the premises 24x7 and receives all alarms and video signals.In addition, the environment is safeguarded with emergency power, redundant cooling units, redundant temperature and humidity control units, and fire extinguisher equipment.
Secure access connection
The hosting segment is connected to the Internet through a fault tolerant Internet structure supported by redundant Internet Service Providers. The segment is protected by a Cisco firewall using strong encryption (3DES). Authentication is executed by the use of shared-key functionality embedded in the Cisco firewall. The hosting partner operates the firewall which includes surveillance of the equipment, examination of traffic via log information, and if needed updates to the Cisco operating system (IOS).Operations Management Services
The environment is connected to Operation Management Services from which the state of the environment is controlled, and daily operations tasks are executed, such as backup, restore, surveillance, security patches, virus scanning and Service Desk functionalities.Help Desk
The Help Desk is the single point-of-contact, where Sites and CRAs are able to receive functional help and report incidents or request information. Incidents reported through the Help Desk and alarms received from the surveillance systems are collected and reacted upon as part of their Operations Management concept.All calls to the Help Desk are registered in the Problem Management System and the caller receives an incident ticket number for further reference. If the incident cannot be solved at the Help Desk, the incident is routed to 2nd level support. The 2nd level support initiates a problem handling process, and reports back progress to the Help Desk.
