and Ethics Committees in a secure environment. These applications use sophisticated algorithms to ensure the safety reports are distributed to the correct users. Grant negotiation and payment tracking Clinical researchers are paid in the form of "grants" which are processed when certain milestones are achieved. The grants are typically negotiated prior to study start up. Most clinical trial portals include a secure document exchange technology that facilitates the negotiation of these grants as well as an application that tracks the processing of each grant. Study training Training of study teams and site staff is becoming more important as the industry shifts to a more technology-driven environment. Clinical Trial Portals may include an LMS (Learning Management System) to deliver and track on and offline training and certification. Access to EDC and other online applications Clinical Trial Portals can provide a single-sign-on capability using a SAML (Security Assertion Mark-up Language) technology to reduce the number of websites and credentials that are typically required to conduct a clinical trial. Links to other clinical trial technologies being used for a study can be incorporated into the portal to provide users with a common technology platform for the studies they conduct. Reporting Reporting on study and site progress throughout a clinical trial is a critical component of a Clinical Trial Portal for Study Managers and Site Monitors. Reports should be available at the study, country, site and user level and should the assignment/completion of tasks, audit trails on all activity, recruitment/enrollment progress, and other milestone/timeline driven activities. In addition, portals can incorporate data from other clinical trial systems to provide meaningful dashboard and detail level reports that help manage the overall study progress. Patient recruitment and retention Global patient recruitment and retention campaigns are complicated to deploy and track due to the complex submission/approval process that IRBs and ethics committees require on a country-by-country basis. Clinical Trial Portals can include patient recruitment management applications that track actual vs projected enrollment, site recruitment plans, IRB/EC submission/approval dates, recruitment material management, outreach tactics and ROI. As most of the trials suffer by time delays by both patient recruitment issues and patient drop-outs, Trial Portals having the ability to interact with Patients can enhance the patient motivation to stay in a trial. References Clinical research Clinical trials