San Francisco, California, October 20, 2010
ARX, a leading provider of digital signature solutions, has implemented the CoSign® digital signature solution at Westat, a provider of contract research services to government agencies as well as NGOs, Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology companies. CoSign has been implemented in the Clinical Trials area of Westat’s Health Studies division, and also in the software development team.
“The idea to implement CoSign grew largely out of our desire to link the people that are signing off on regulatory documents but are physically disconnected,” explains Jennifer Yunis, Senior Quality Assurance Associate, Westat. “Further, it was crucial for us to employ a solution that would enable regulatory compliance, while also driving significant time and cost savings.”
With CoSign digital signatures for clinical operations, Westat’s CRAs and other Clinical Trials professionals can quickly and compliantly sign off on site monitoring reports, IRB forms, training requirements forms and more. Employees in other sectors are also using CoSign to digitally sign project plan approvals, software development lifecycle documents, internal audit reports, archiving forms, project plan approvals and even expense reports. Due to CoSign’s seamless integration with all major document formats, these users are able to digitally sign Microsoft® Word, Adobe® PDF, and other document types they most commonly use from within the applications themselves.
“With CoSign, we’ve managed to expedite the approval and distribution of standard operating procedures, as well as the approval and implementation of systems from the Development team, and more,” says Yunis. “Processes that used to take us weeks to get approved or completed now get completed in the course of half-an-hour or an hour, depending on how long it takes people to look at their email.”
“Westat pursued an initial Proof of Concept using CoSign for digital signatures and, once deemed successful and valuable, has progressively deployed the technology throughout their enterprise,” said Rodd Schlerf, FDA and USDA Markets Manager, ARX. “CoSign has become the de facto standard in clinical research organizations of all sizes ranging from the largest CROs in the world as well as mid-sized and niche organizations.”
