Which product is Client and Project Title: National Institutes of Health, Clinical Center Bench-to-Bedside Program.
Industry: Federal Government
Product: proposalCENTRAL
Challenge: The goal of The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center’s Bench-to-Bedside program is to integrate the work of basic and clinical scientists on the NIH campus. The program was expanded in 2006 to encourage partnerships between intramural and extramural programs. To date, more than 400 principal and associate investigators have collaborated on 135 funded projects with $24M distributed in total Bench-to-Bedside funding. Unfortunately, Bench-to-Bedside proposals were being produced in hard copies that had to be routed to several institutes and/or centers for the director’s approval before progressing to the scientific peer review process. Busy directors were forced to review proposals one at a time, creating a time crunch and an extraordinary amount of paper. In addition, record keeping was done manually, burdening an already overextended Clinical Center staff.
Altum Answer: Altum worked with the NIH’s Clinical Center to create a fully electronic application and review process using proposalCENTRAL.
Result: Directors now can access proposalCENTRAL, review all submissions at once and submit a simple “Yes” to note their approval. Scientific reviewers no longer need to carry large binders of proposals but instead review all applications online and submit their critiques electronically. In addition, proposalCENTRAL drastically reduces the effort involved in coordinating the review process. Manual data entry has been eliminated, and proposalCENTRAL’s built-in reports feature facilitates easy reporting.