Clinical Trial Payment Management System
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Solution Overview
Problem
The complexity of managing payments for clinical trials across multiple suppliers and subcontractors leads to errors, duplication, and delayed invoices, resulting in costly mistakes and compliance issues for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Innovation Solution
A software application program with equations and business rules is used to track and calculate appropriate invoice payments, providing real-time visibility into deliverables and cash flow needs, automatically generating business intelligence information to ensure accurate payments and compliance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If multiple suppliers and subcontractors are used to perform clinical trials, then the trial can be executed with diverse capabilities and resources, but the payment management process becomes complex and error-prone
Solution Approach 1:
The patent consolidates multiple suppliers, subcontractors, and payment processes into a single integrated system. The system unifiedly manages all contractual agreements, deliverables, and payments across the entire clinical trial supply chain, eliminating the need for separate tracking systems for each supplier or subcontractor.
Solution Approach 2:
The payment management system is designed to handle multiple functions universally: it manages contractual agreements, tracks deliverables, processes payments, and provides visibility across all suppliers and subcontractors through a single platform, rather than requiring separate systems for each function.
2Ease of operation
If suppliers track their own invoices independently, then they can manage their individual costs, but duplicate charges and errors occur that neither party discovers
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements automated feedback mechanisms where the sponsor's system receives invoice data from suppliers, cross-references it against the master contractual agreement and deliverable tracking data, and automatically identifies duplicates or errors before payment processing, providing real-time validation feedback to both parties.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces a centralized payment management system as an intermediary between suppliers and the sponsor. This intermediary consolidates all invoice data, compares it against the master agreement, and processes payments, eliminating the need for suppliers to independently track and verify their own invoices while preventing duplicate payments.
3Measurement precision
If the sponsor manually verifies invoices against contractual agreements, then payment accuracy can be ensured, but the process is time-consuming and expensive
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service automated verification where the payment management system automatically matches supplier invoices against the master contractual agreement, deliverable completion status, and budget constraints without requiring manual intervention from sponsor staff, thereby maintaining high accuracy while dramatically reducing processing time.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the manual mechanical process of invoice verification with an automated electronic system that uses software algorithms to cross-reference invoices against contractual data, deliverable tracking information, and payment rules, eliminating the need for human analysts to manually review each invoice while maintaining or improving verification accuracy.
4Productivity
If late invoices are processed after trial conclusion, then all submitted invoices can be paid, but verification becomes near impossible and errors persist
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary verification and validation of invoices against the master contractual agreement and deliverable completion status before the trial concludes, ensuring all payments are accurately verified while the project data is still current and accessible, rather than attempting verification years after trial completion when data may be lost or inaccessible.
Data Source
AI summary
A clinical trial study is modeled for automatically generating business intelligence information regarding the clinical trial study. The clinical trial study has a total budget amount and a total amount of deliverables. A software application program is provided that has equations and business rules that together define a process, a timeline, and deliverables associated with the clinical trial study. The program is populated with items including entities that have been contracted to provide the deliverables to the clinical trial study, budget items and amounts related to the deliverables for the respective entities that have been contracted to provide the deliverables, and for at least some of the budget items, a time frame in which the budget item is expected to be incurred or paid. Business intelligence information is then automatically generated using the equations and business rules in the program, and the items entered into the program. The business intelligence information includes appropriate invoice payments for the deliverables for the respective entities that have been contracted to provide the deliverables at a specific time frame, an accounting for the clinical trial study, and cash flow needs for the clinical trial study.