Case Study: CTMS Implementation at CHUV Lausanne University Hospital
When a hospital pharmacy's clinical trial portfolio grows by 49% in four years, the paper-based processes that once worked start to become a liability. Tracking activities, consolidating study data, and preparing accurate invoices on time - tasks that were manageable at lower volume - begin consuming time that qualified pharmacists and technicians should be spending elsewhere.
This case study describes the end-to-end implementation of a Clinical Trial Management System (CTMS) in the hospital pharmacy of CHUV (Lausanne University Hospital, one of Europe's leading academic medical centres) carried out by Doctor K Consulting between November 2024 and February 2025.
The situation
Between 2016 and 2020, the number of clinical trials handled by the CHUV pharmacy increased by 49%. Compliant paper-based processes were in place, but the growing workload made it increasingly difficult to track trial activities, consolidate study data across a expanding portfolio, and generate accurate invoices within billing periods. The burden was falling on an already stretched team.
The pharmacy needed a system. Not an enterprise platform, a tool that was practical, learnable, and genuinely suited to how a hospital pharmacy clinical trial unit actually operates.
The solution
Following a structured requirements analysis, a custom CTMS developed at the Clinical Research Centre (CRC) Lausanne was selected for implementation. Built on Microsoft Access with a clean graphical interface, the system was designed for exactly this environment: straightforward data entry, activity tracking, milestone management, and invoicing support, without the overhead of a full enterprise validation framework, which was outside scope given the system's complementary role alongside the existing validated paper record.
The system operates across four core master data objects, Users, Groups (with invoicing method distinction), Categories (task types), and Milestones, and supports three levels of use: administration, study setup, and ongoing execution.
Project execution
The implementation ran from November 2024 to February 2025 across four structured phases:
— Assessment and requirements gathering: review of the existing CTMS functionality against the pharmacy's actual workflows, identifying gaps and defining required customisations
— Customisation and iteration: development of pharmacy-specific enhancements, released incrementally to selected users for feedback before broader rollout
— Documentation and training: preparation of a comprehensive written user manual covering all system functions, followed by in-person training sessions for the full team
— Data migration and go-live: transfer of existing study data into the live system, followed by a hypercare period to resolve early post-deployment issues and confirm adoption
The outcome
The CHUV pharmacy team gained a centralised, accessible record of all active clinical trials, with the ability to track activities, generate statistics, and produce invoice-ready summaries at the close of each billing period. The manual consolidation burden that had grown with the portfolio was replaced by a structured, system-driven process the team could operate independently from day one.
A reference letter from the clinical pharmacist team is available on request.
A broader observation
This project reinforced something we see consistently across clinical research environments: operational software doesn't need to be complex to be effective. The functions that made the difference at CHUV, study tracking, activity recording, and invoicing, are the same pain points we hear from research teams across Switzerland and beyond. What sites need is not more features. It is clarity, usability, and a system that reflects how their team actually works.
