Stanford University is a leading research university, especially in the areas of technology and biomedicine. They have a long-standing history of working alongside industry to get their ideas to market quickly and effectively. So, it’s no surprise that managing conflict of interest at Stanford is a growing challenge. Among researchers at Stanford, there is a common saying, “No conflict, no interest.” Discovering something new at this level often means being one of the few in the world who can do the work. It also means crossing paths with the few technology, biomedical, or start-up companies that can utilize the research. Conflict is inevitable and common. Managing it is crucial to protecting the validity of research and intellectual integrity of researchers and students.
Stanford realized their system for managing conflict of interest needed serious help. They used an ad hoc system of email, forms, documents, and paper archiving. Very few people understood the whole of it, administrators in various research management and compliance departments often didn’t know whether a conflict had been resolved, and auditing how a Stanford managed a particular conflict of interest took weeks of effort, just to piece it back together.
To understand all of this, we interviewed conflict of interest managers, research management and compliance staff in various departments, and researchers themselves. We discovered a much bigger need than a simple form: conflict of interest is just one piece of a large system of research administration. Different administrators need different views into this system and researchers need to reduce the time and effort they are spending on research reporting and compliance activities. Often, they are asked to supply the same information, over and over.
We designed a conflict of interest solution as a piece of a larger system for research administration and began to knit key reports and research information together through our design choices. Stanford is still working through this approach and adding other research administration forms and systems into a central reporting tool.