How to Successfully Go Live
At SliceVault, we’ve supported many study teams worldwide in bringing imaging into their clinical trials. From our experience across imaging workflows, regulatory requirements, and the SliceVault platform itself, we’ve developed a structured onboarding approach that gives every project the best chance of success.
Following this process helps ensure that your entire team - administrators, investigators, readers, and monitors - are aligned and confident from day one. We strongly recommend adhering to this framework, as it reflects best practices developed from real-world studies across diverse sponsor environments.
Step-by-Step Guide to Go-Live
1. Submit the Onboarding Document
Every implementation begins with the onboarding document. By completing this early, you provide us with the details we need to configure your SliceVault environment according to your study setup, roles, and workflow. The sooner this is submitted, the sooner we can have your test system ready.
2. Review and Finalize the Project Structure
Once the test environment is available, you’ll have the opportunity to review the configured workflows, forms, and user roles. This is the stage for fine-tuning - requesting any adjustments and confirming that the setup reflects your trial’s requirements. Our team will support you through each iteration until you are satisfied.
3. Align Your Study Team
It is important that everyone involved understands their responsibilities in SliceVault. To support this, we provide user-specific manuals tailored to Investigators, Quality Control staff, Readers, and Monitors. Distributing these materials helps ensure each role is prepared and aligned before the study begins.
4. Conduct User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Before going live, we recommend a structured UAT phase. This step validates that the workflows operate as intended, including data uploads, form completion, and access rules. We provide a UAT plan, test templates, and guidance, ensuring your team can confirm readiness in a systematic way.
5. Sign Off with the Software Acceptance Protocol
Once UAT is complete and the system meets expectations, you will sign the Software Acceptance Protocol. This formal step moves the project into the production environment.
6. Go Live and Begin Your Study
When live, the Trial Administrator can begin adding sites and users. All functionality becomes active, allowing teams to upload real patient data. From this point, our support team remains available for any assistance you require throughout the study.
Best Practices for Launch:
- Engage all relevant stakeholders early, including radiology, clinical operations, and quality assurance teams.
- Assign a Trial Administrator early in the process.
- Encourage sites to complete test uploads during UAT.
- Use the provided training materials and reach out whenever clarification is needed.
Tailored Flexibility, Guided by Best Practices
SliceVault is designed to be highly flexible, able to support a wide range of workflows, study designs, and role configurations. This flexibility means your study can be tailored to match project-specific needs while still staying within a validated framework.
However, flexibility also introduces complexity. To ensure smooth operations, all stakeholders - administrators, investigators, readers, and monitors - need a shared understanding of how the system is configured and how their roles interact with it. Clear communication and consistent training are essential.
Training as the Key to Success
Training is one of the most critical factors in ensuring a confident go-live. While SliceVault provides these sessions, they are initiated by the sponsor or CRO and tailored to the roles involved.
Project Team Training
A single structured session is typically delivered for sponsors, CROs, and project team members. This session focuses on how the system has been configured, how to manage it effectively, and how workflows support regulatory compliance. Gathering all relevant participants together ensures alignment and consistency across roles.
Site Investigator Training
Site-level training is equally important. These sessions are tailored to investigators and site staff, focusing on their role-specific tasks such as uploading imaging data, responding to queries, and tracking submissions. Training is usually delivered virtually in one focused session, making it efficient and directly relevant.
Both project and site training are designed to be efficient, role-specific, and practical. They are not scheduled automatically, but rather offered as part of our onboarding support whenever requested by the sponsor or CRO. With this approach, every user - from project managers to investigators and readers - can enter the study confident and prepared.