CRCU Resources

The Clinical Research Collaboration Unit (CRCU) is now located at 3600 Civic Center Boulevard (CCB) on the 4th floor where it shares space with the Biostatistics Analysis Center (BAC). For more than 25 years, the CRCU has been expertly providing the full range of services essential for the conduct of clinical research, including Phase I-IV, multi-center, randomized, clinical trials, registry, and cohort studies.

The CRCU excels in the support of biomedical and clinical research by providing expertise in all facets of research information and data management, and a broad understanding of the complex clinical, regulatory, and cultural environments in which research is conducted, utilizing the following research informatics tools and resources:

Research Informatics Tools & Resources

Veeva Vault  – FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliant clinical data management tool used to manage projects requiring FDA oversight, such as trials of an Investigational New Drug (IND) or New Drug Applications (NDA).

Oracle Development Suite – A set of database and programming tools used to create customized solutions for data management, reporting, and workflow control.

REDCap – A clinical trial data entry and reporting tool that is hosted by the Perelman School of Medicine.  The CRCU uses this tool for rapid development of less complicated clinical trials.

Penn CRMS (Velos) – The Penn Clinical Research Management System tool managed by the Office of Clinical Research. The CRCU works with this tool for studies conducted by Perelman School of Medicine investigators.

PENN DnA – A research repository of clinical data maintained by the University of Pennsylvania Health System.  This repository contains demographics, health history, diagnosis, lab results, and healthcare data that the CRCU can draw from in support of Penn based trials.

Honest Broker - The CRCU has trained honest brokers who support researchers by extracting and providing data from the electronic health record for research purposes.

NIH Data Repository – The NIH maintains a repository of specimens and clinical trials data for projects sponsored by member institutes.  The CRCU works with Penn investigators to comply with NIH data sharing requirements and to transfer study data to the repository as contracted.

Custom Website/Dashboard Development – The CRCU uses custom websites and dashboards as tools to implement real-time data visualization, and to disseminate study related information.