Excellent question. As an electronic system, the InfoEd suite allows both PI’s and administrative staff to view in real time proposal and protocol information. In the case of protocols, there are two general levels of access, one on the development side, and one on the management side. Here are some helpful areas where a PI’s life could be made easier by an institute fully implementing any of the compliance modules (question/answer format):
Q: Which form do I use?
A: Pick your submission type, and your eForm will be delivered automatically. Required uploads will be configured with placeholders, so these must be uploaded before submission.
Q: Which questions do I need to answer?
A: You need to answer the mandatory questions. The others are important too, but the administrative staff really needs those answered. There could be mandatory questions, sections, pages or eForms. Uploads could be mandatory too. Based on your answers, more questions may appear. To facilitate answering, the admin staff could pre-populate some of the fields for you, along with delivering personnel information.
Q: What’s the status of my submission?
A: Log into InfoEd, click on Show/List, and find your protocol. Use the “info bubble” to determine your protocol’s overall status. To view each of your submission statuses, open your record and it will be displayed on the first screen, your submission summary.
Q: Where are my approval letters?
A: They are in your email. Once a letter is generated, it can be sent to your InfoEd (internal) and external mailboxes. The administrative staff also has access, as all of the protocols correspondence is saved on the protocol. (We’re working on creating an easy-to-use area for approved documents and letters).
Q: How can I quickly process reviews?
A: A review is sent as an action item, to both your internal and external email addresses, along with your action item queue. Open one up, open the associated eForms or documents, make suggestions, provisions and comments, select your status, and send everything back to the committee. Your review is private; the PI does not receive your comments directly. For assigned reviews, configurations allow for independent review, where reviewers can either see or not see other’s comments.
Q: Don’t I need to sign anything?
A: Not during the submission or review process. The act of submitting a protocol or performing a routing, assigned, or workflow review creates an electronic signature, and includes when and who performed the action. Certification text is used for “terms and conditions” information, to assure the office staff that the PI or reviewers know what they are signing off on. Your office staff may still want a handwritten signature before or after final approval.